Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.
Josef Lebánek

Jan Saudek
Twin B
Kája Saudek
Twin A

Alena Skokanová
Jožka Severin

Cordobés 65
Cordobés 65

What's Wrong With This Building?
What's Wrong With This Building?

99 days
99 days

Los Fantasmas del Jefe
Los Fantasmas del Jefe
where are you now
where are you now

Ultimate Scandinavia
Ultimate Scandinavia

Don't You Feel Lovely Today
Don't You Feel Lovely Today

Out of the City
Out of the City
CERN, or The Factory for the Absolute
CERN, or The Factory for the Absolute

Hide and Seek
Hide and Seek
Dust Devils
Dust Devils
AquaBurn
AquaBurn