Visegrad Highlights

Goat Walker / Ballada o kozie

Bartek Konopka / Poland / 2003 / 60 min.

A black comedy whose heroine is a goat. From her point of view, we learn about a recent measure to combat poverty and unemployment in Poland : instead of the usual social welfare assistance, the inhabitants of a small Polish community are given goats, to serve as a supply of basic foods like milk and cheese. A humorous portrait of rural Polish reality in the context of European Union enlargement.

Contact: Planet TV, www.planet-tv.de

Hitler, Stalin and I / Hitler, Stalin a já

Helena Třeštíková / Czech Republic / 2001 / 56 min.

Heda Blochová was born in prewar Czechoslovakia into a rich Jewish family. Her parents were co-founders of the Prague factory Koh-i-noor. During WWII, together with her husband Rudolf Margoli, she was sent to the ghetto in Lodz and later deported to Auschwitz . Heda was moved to another camp, from which she managed to escape. After the war, during the Communist political purges of the 1950s, her husband became a victim in the trials with Rudolf Slánský. Heda Blochová suffered the fate of a wife of a “traitor of the people.” The humiliation and discrimination that she faced after the Soviet occupation in 1968 forced her to emigrate. She returned to Czechoslovakia again after 1989. Now she tells her life story, providing a vivid and stirring picture of the 20th century marked by the cruelty of two totalitarian regimes.

Contact: Czech TV – Telexport, email: telexport@czech-tv.cz , www.czech-tv.cz

The Kingdom of Silence / Csendország

Robert Lakatos / Hungary / 2001 / 32 min.

What does a camera mean to a ten-year old mute boy from a mountain village? A film about experiences and emotions.

Contact: Magyar Filmunió, email: annamaria.basa@filmunio.hu

Love Thy Neighbour / Miluj blížneho svojho

Dušan Hudec / Slovakia / 2004 / 85 min.

This documentary depicts moments of the persecution against Jews in Topoľčany in September 1945. The documentary reveals spreading of local hatred against Jews. A group of people, who got hold of Jewish property during the Second World War, founded a secret organization against Jews who survived and came back home from the camps of death to Topoľčany. There they felt once again the hatred of their neighbours and were constantly deprived of social equality. In 1948 they managed to leave for Israel , America and Australia . Depicted historical evidences and tragic happenings in Topoľčany smoothly focus on principles of cohabitation between neighbours of the two worlds. Both sides reflect irrational hatred and hypocritical attitudes towards Jews. Along with it the documentary film is trying to find the road to reconciliation.

Contact: Dušan Hudec, email: dusanhudec@hotmail.com

Anything Can Happen / Wszystko może się przytrafić

Marcel Łoziński / Poland / 1995 / 39 min.

Acclaimed Polish filmmaker Marcel Lozinski takes his six-year-old son, Tomek, to the park on a mild spring day, and together they make a film of rare insight and meditative contemplation. Little Tomek is fitted with a small, hidden microphone, and the camera follows from a distance as he rides around the park on his scooter, observing nature around him (to the suggestive sounds of waltz) and then stopping and talking with people, mostly senior citizens, whom he meets by chance. Tomek’s high spirits and natural child’s curiosity about the world around him sparks conversations with the older generation, who share their wisdom and reflections on life with the young boy, who in turn shares his innocent philosophizing. As in his other films, such as Oscar-nominated “89 mm from Europe ” (1993) and “I Remember” (2001), Lozinski takes a poetic and essayistic look at his subject. The result here is a delightful journey of discovery that touches lightly, but with great depth, on what it means to be alive

Contact: Studio Filmowe Kalejdoskop, email: studio@kalejdoskop.art.pl

The Beauty Exchange / Ženy pro měny

Erika Hníková / Czech Republic / 2003 / 75 min.

The specter of “ideal feminine beauty” rises everywhere around the three women who are the main protagonists of this exceptional film. The artificially created ideal of beauty is a phenomenon of this world, and Erika Hníková examines the issue from several angles. In addition to the three protagonists, other voices are blended into the film, among them students, beauty queens, and feminists. The author enters the debate, and through the film she not only illustrates the issue, she discovers something more about herself

Contact: endorfilm, email: konecny@quick.cz

Women Condemned / Ítéletlenül

Tamás Almási / Hungary / 1991 / 77 min.

A film about women who were institutionalised and held in captivity in Hungary in the 1950s.

Contact: Magyar Filmunió, email: annamaria.basa@filmunio.hu

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