Šípek!
Over four years, this film documented the life of Bořek Šípek, a Czech architect, glassmaker, Buddhist, avid cook and traveller. At the beginning of the shoot, Šípek lived with his partner Leona, owned a Thai restaurant in Prague and spent his weekends at Ajeto glass factory. Every week he travelled thousands of kilometres to supervise jobs in various parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. After celebrating his sixtieth birthday, he split up with his long-time girlfriend, quit the restaurant business and left Ajeto. Then he opened a couple of new glass shops and moved to another neighbourhood in Prague. After that he started working with glassmakers in Nový Bor, moved again, opened another glass shop and left the Nový Bor glass works. In January 2012, as Czech glass business struggles to survive in the global economic crisis, he opened his own glass factory in Nový Bor.
Bohemian Identity
Graphic design is a field that affects many areas of human and social life. The aim of the documentary series is to show how graphic design has a significant impact on society and the everyday life of individuals. The products of graphic design accompany people from morning to night: the moment they look at their mobile phone, when they watch the TV news, when they react to traffic signs while driving or when they fall asleep with a book. The documentary series will map the major projects and important personalities in the field from the founding of Czechoslovakia to the present day and show how graphic design is interconnected not only with cultural and political events, but also with many other fields of human activity, such as modern technology, psychology, industry, urban planning, architecture, pedagogy, cartography, etc. We will show the paths to the seemingly simple elements we use in our daily lives. We will introduce historical figures and contemporary matadors of design as evasive observers of then and now (and usually as designers of reality). Among other things, we will create a TV manual for ordinary people on how to fight visual smog, how to distinguish kitsch from quality, how to improve the space (and not only the public one) around you by small steps. We will show viewers what our Czech identity consists of and is framed by. That it is dozens and hundreds of objects of everyday use - banknotes, stamps, logos and signs, signs on shops and streets, wayfinding systems and street signs, daily newspapers, posters, books. It will be about looking back at old trends, how decades of unfreedom shaped and deformed Czech creativity, and how modern and new directions and creators are drawing on or defining themselves today. An important moment of the whole series is the fact that it will not show graphic design chronologically from history to the present, but will deal with it topic by topic.