2024

Birdhill

Capitalism from a bird’s -eye perspective.

Eva´s home is a small hill called Birdhill on the outskirts of Bratislava. During her childhood, it was still covered with historic vineyards of Maria Theresa and forest; today’s reality is cranes and excavators. In her film, she gets to know its current inhabitants and discovers that each of them lives and dreams a slightly different version of this charismatic place. Even though they live on the same hill, they cannot come together to set limits on the construction that is transforming their home unrecognizably, ruthlessly and at a breathtaking pace.

The film Dajori (which means mother in Romani) tells the story of the main character Marie (45), a mother of three children who lives an ordinary life in a block of flats in Varnsdorf with her husband Enrico (50). For a long time now, Varnsdorf has been classified as an area whose population is threatened by poverty and social exclusion. Marie assumes the role of the female head of her extended family and decides to help her younger sister Iveta who has became homeless with her nine children.

Two-year-old Anabel and nine-year-old Samuel end up being fostered by Marie and Enrico. In the next three years, the film follows the dynamics of the new family and Marie's efforts to provide the traumatized children with motherly love while at the same time raising them according to her ideals.

While Iveta is unable to get out of her problems, Samuel enters puberty and challenges Maria's efforts… 

© Film & Sociologie, Česká televize, Media Voice

How does a popular obscenity become a cultural symbol,or why does the diamond make the Czechs smile?

A documentary about a uniquely Czech depiction of the female crotch as a diamond with a vertical line in the middle. The original vulgarity painted on walls and in public toilets with its recorded history reaching to the 17^th century became a phenomenon that entered the highest levels of Czech art in the 20^th century – be it drama, literature (Milan Kundera), visual art (Štyrský) or film. At the same time, it left its humorous mark on the Czech population by giving it its „diamond perspective“. Paradoxically, the Czech diamond thus has become, though officially overlooked, an actual part of the Czech cultural heritage. The author will take a historical, cultural anthropological and sociological perspective on this graphic symbol. Director: Rudolf Šmíd.

A film with elements of a classic documentary, re-enactments and animation techniques.