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