Helena Třeštíková: A Moment in Time Lapse
We're excited to present this collection 'A Momement in Time-Lapse', dedicated to the work of Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, who has spent over 40 years making what she calls 'time-lapse documentaries', a long-form, longitudinal form of filmmaking, which often sees Třeštíková spending many years with those she films.
Třeštíková describes that "the purpose of a time-lapse film is to offer the audience an expanded experience of the world and to offer the protagonists such an interpretation of their lives, which they could accept as their true life stories."
All of Helena's films are made in the Czech Republic, chronicling ordinary lives, capturing their extraordinary moments.
Penelope My Love
For 18 years I have been filming Pénélope, a young adult with autism. One day I opened the cupboard that contained DV tapes and Super 8 reels. It almost popped my eyes out. We had to bring all these images together.
Pénélope mon amour traces the journey of a mother and her daughter through the years. It tells of different stages: the shock of the diagnosis, the declaration of war, the abdication of arms, to finally accept and discover a different mode of existence. This body of Pénélope, and a fortiori this body of the autistic person in the social space, what place does it occupy and what place do we give it? What land can cinema invent to design a hospitable space, dream of a world allowing the invisible to become visible?
"Doyon’s deeply generous work...embraces the beauty of difference" - MoMA Doc Fortnight
Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege
The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018. When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and resistance and set up a siege from 2013 on. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, Yarmouk was cut off from the rest of the world.
"Abdallah Al-Khatib’s searing documentary was completed two years ago; its arrival now has an awful new significance" - Guardian
I Am the Tigress
A curtain, a shadow, one dancing hand, and then another: Tischa Thomas stages her performance. She pushes herself into the frame bit by bit, with flowing movements, to the rhythm of the music. Right before our eyes, “The Tigress” emerges from the individual body parts. She’s a performer of the first order, full of ambition, who challenges herself every day, whose dream is to have a number 1 spot as a bodybuilder. Philipp Fussenegger and co-director and DoP Dino Osmanović accompany 47-year-old Tischa to bodybuilding competitions in the USA and Romania and show her training sessions: “Look at you. Look what you've done. Look what you've created. Do you like that? And I will say to myself in the mirror: Yeah, I do like this. [...] I like what I have created.”
a touching look at the many different manifestations of what we call strength." - Guardian
Looking for Horses
Looking for Horses’ is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother tongue due to a stutter. Despite their speech and hearing limitations, a bond develops between the young man and the veteran, as he shares his world of the lake: full of large catfish, wild horses, wide silences, and dangerous thunderstorms.
"poetic meditation on the lasting impacts of the Bosnian war...Taking the form of a visual pilgrimage, Pavlovic’s poetic documentary shifts between the scenic tranquility of the location and brutal anecdotes to reveal the open wounds of the past." - Guardian