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

 

“The future is a relative concept. It’s up to us to imagine it.” How right that well-coiffed television show host is, who toasts a possibly colourful future in black and white – at a time when people first set foot on the moon and tanks invade Prague, both with unforeseeable consequences. For who can really know how people will live in a few decades. When Petr begins a diary in 1974 on the day of his wedding with Jana in Prague, he has no idea how the world and his little family universe will develop – and how they will influence each other. When shortly afterwards Helena Třeštíková begins to follow Jana’s pregnancy with her camera, she has no idea that 37 years later this will become her longest-running long-term documentary so far: “Private Universe”. Petr’s diary entries provide the variable structure of this consistently light-handed family portrait. From the diary perspective, great political upheavals sometimes look like marginal notes, first teeth like major events. The changes in Czech society are traced on a small scale – a life between Karel Gott and John Lennon. The full dimension of the film’s title, however, becomes evident only when son Honza, the rebellious one, gradually turns into the actual protagonist. At the hour of his birth 37 years ago, he had no idea that he was already under the camera’s star. A lucky star? 

Lars Meyer, DOK Leipzig Catalogue 2012

In 1989, Helena Třeštíková begins to film the juvenile prisoner René. She follows the rhythm of his life for almost twenty years, a life spent in prisons, interrupted only by brief periods of freedom. Twenty years in which epoch-making upheavals unroll, in which systems, forms of government and regimes change – hinted at by television images that filter into René’s cell. The stagnation and absence of tempo “inside” is juxtaposed with a restless “outside” where René is moving in squares, at stations and in trains – without ever arriving anywhere. The link between inside and outside is the director herself, who becomes the only reliable constant in her protagonist’s life. A contradictory, up-and-down relationship that René reflects on in his letters to Třeštíková. Read out by him, they add another layer to the film in which the filmmaker virtually becomes the second protagonist. René, who with her help goes on to become a successful writer himself, turns out to be an equal, but difficult partner, drastically demanding her attention and questioning the relationship between filmmaker and protagonist again and again. The attempts to make him the co-author of this film are part of the story. A story of overwhelming power that goes right where it hurts.

Helena Třeštíková won the 2008 Golden Dove in Leipzig for “René”.

Grit Lemke, DOK Leipzig Catalogue 2008

The miracle of birth in close-up. Třeštíková’s first observational documentary marks the starting point of a long-term study that is to last 37 years and culminate in the film “Private Universe”. Her distinctive style is already evident in this intimate miniature – the portrait of a young woman preparing for motherhood emerges in just a few scenes. Třeštíková won the 1975 Golden Dove in Leipzig for “The Miracle”.

Lina Dinkla