Prague-based filmmaker Helena Třeštíková has been filming marriage stories since the early 1980s, resulting in several long-term documentaries. Ivana and Václav’s everlasting marriage covenant is the subject of observation in this episode, which ranges from the day before the wedding to the present day. Back then, in December 1980, Ivana is 21 years old and Václav 24. Both study architecture and marry “because we like each other. And other things. Things better not talked about.” The first child is born shortly after the wedding. Třeštíková is obviously attracted to certain places she keeps returning to, but mostly to people and the way they try to give their lives meaningful directions. In this “Marriage Story”, we discern an incredible desire for expansion and growth which becomes evident in an accumulation of objects, children and responsibilities – one of the underlying motives of the Strnads’ marriage which gradually unfolds over 35 years together.

Carolin Weidner, DOK Leipzig Catalogue 2017

 

Three kids trudge through the snow. One of them sees a falling star and gets to make a wish. But it’s not quite that simple, because the two friends think the childish wish is too short-sighted and selfish in light of global problems. Ninety seconds in bright colours and with cute characters that show briefly and succinctly what goes bitterly wrong when the right thing is no longer right.

André Eckardt

April 2020: The playground is empty and quiet, with a sadly fluttering barrier tape that nobody cares about because everyone is at home in lockdown. Except for a pear-shaped 3D figure which pads searchingly through the gravelly sand on thin legs, in chunky sneakers. It is towing an exhausted balloon with a frozen smile and – chunky sneakers. The dangling balloon hands pat the lonely rule-breaker from above. Franz Impler’s poetic and playfully condensed snapshot lets us empathise with an indescribable, exceptional situation in all its melancholy and absurdity.

André Eckardt

A tennis player is driven to despair by his opponent, a devious blue Cheshire cat. After her serve, she uses wicked magic to manipulate the spatial coordinates and establishes the one, ruthless rule: Now the court keeps rotating and with every return the player, long-since destined to lose, crowns himself the invincible opponent. A creative tennis nightmare.

André Eckardt

On the outskirts of the city, the new modern buildings are silent, the highway bridge hisses. Birds circle in the sky. A young man, hidden by a hooded sweater, is driving an e-scooter on a path in the park. Only the gun slung over his shoulder irritates. Anon Cla’s film portrays an atmosphere of high alert while disaster has already struck. Increasingly drastic scenes play out serenely. The soundtrack to this screaming silence is supplied by a high-tech world: highway, tram, indicator sounds, emergency signals. What the sound backdrop rigidly refuses is to provide a loud release that would resolve the tension. The suburban landscape is steeped in a read, theatrical warning light, blurring limit the view. The 3D computer design veils neither the artificiality nor the computer-based deformation of the images. Normality has become a battle zone where the machine matrix already reigns.

André Eckardt

Anton Cla builds on a documentary film project by his artist friend Charles Dhondt about dysphasia, a language processing disorder: The colourful and protean picture of a man sitting quietly on a chair and yet radiating unbridled energy keeps flickering in Cubist style. The viewer’s gaze approaches the man’s head, and the more it does so, the wilder the colours and shapes become until at last they form a whirlpool of drawers. A world of its own, complex and creative, that has trouble taking in the outside world and is hard to convey to the outside.

André Eckardt

An empty room floats weightlessly in the dark. Its three walls glow, displaying abstract movements. Are they projected inventions or is there a world behind them? At least this quiet, disquieting in-between place, this empty stage, offers time to dream: A ride “no brakes downhill” (Tin Fingers) that passes a flight of stairs, a petrol station, a panorama window. Anton Cla designs a mystically charged architecture of the imaginary, whose statics are calculated from light, sound, movement and the manipulation of time.

André Eckardt

 

Somewhere between fascination and shock we slowly begin to make out what is moving here as a grey, overgrown mass. A bodyless head sings in a salmon-red universe. The voice is borrowed from Shaun Ryder, the lead singer of the Happy Mondays, whose already drawling rap is slowed down to an unreal slow motion here. The song quoted, “Tart, Tart”, is about a tragic, lonely death. A small, effective experiment using the Face Cap software.

André Eckardt

Hands in his pockets and chewing bubble gum – a little big city rebel strolls casually through the streets, accompanied by hazy, sluggish sounds, past graffiti and retro gumball machines. He has perfected his “cool look” and his vanity swells to become a self-portrait. Franz Impler needs only ten seconds to introduce us to someone whose quirky trick amazes and amuses.

André Eckardt

A fluffy pink animal creature pokes its head out of a precisely trimmed green hedge column, singing a euphoric motif, its voice radiating the charm of a vintage synthesizer. Twin creatures with twin voices join from neighbouring hedges, an exhilarating beat resonates. An unhinged anthem with few beats, a brief anarchic moment on this lovely, bright day.

André Eckardt

Joeri is in love without being loved, a schoolyard-like choir teases him again and again, hysterically working themselves up into a frenzy of malice. Driven by fear, the curly-haired redhead in the colourful striped shirt leaps into the void. The empty space around him condenses to a claustrophobic confinement consisting of his own reflections. Suddenly a dark landscape opens, peppered with strange dream images. Anton Cla transforms the confused feelings of a romantically inclined adolescent into a surreal theatre space whose dynamics will leave you spellbound. Belgian composer Michiel De Naegel finds a perfect home for his fictional character Joeri Chipsvingers and his world of sound in Cla’s animation.

André Eckardt

Left to one’s own devices, the appeal of internet posts has faded, boredom and nonsensical ideas take hold: Can the neglected plant be revived with a flat coke? Talking to oneself because there is nobody else. The outside world only shows up in the shape of a dishevelled pizza boy at the door. The hope for the new in-line skates with the cryptic name YMI-2142 you ordered and indeed any hope at all is safest from disappointment when you no longer expect anything. The world of the main character in Franz Impler’s 3D animation is colourful, free of edges and brimming with kindness, which makes the realisation that life can simply move forward without one even sadder.

André Eckardt