Are beer and dumplings enough to make Czechoslovaks happy or would it take their own seaside resort to really perk them up? This subversive and entertaining movie draws on an actual project for a tunnel to the Adriatic and an island built using the excavated earth. Did former Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák really splash in the waves of the Czechoslovak sea?
In the 1960s Karel Žlábek came up with a project for a tunnel, several hundred kilometers long, that served to transport goods to the Adriatic and gave Czechoslovak citizens access to the sea. The excavated earth was used to build an island, but the comrades, headed by President Husák, soon made it off limits and even put the kibosh on the entire project. Strange animals disappeared, as did the memories of several local vacationers and the island’s grandiose structures. This multilevel mockumentary confirms the director’s penchant for events that actually might have happened – even if they didn’t.
13 min / Color, DIGIBETA
Director Adéla Babanová
/ Screenplay Džian Baban, Vojtěch Mašek
/ Dir. of Photography Jakub Halousek
/ Music Džian Baban
/ Editor Adéla Babanová, Hedvika Hansalová
/ Producer Adéla Babanová
/ Cast Dalimil Klapka, Tomáš Petřík, Filip Kaňkovský
/ Contact Jiří Švestka Gallery Prague
Adéla Babanová (b. 1980, Prague) graduated from the new media studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Thus far, short films with mysterious plots are her trademark, their treatment coming closer to "classic” cinema than to video art. She was a finalist for the Czech National Gallery’s 333 Award and the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. In 2013 KVIFF presented her alternative detective picture I Have a Body There.
Jiří Švestka Gallery Prague
Biskupský dvůr 6, 11000, Praha 1
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 222 311 092
E-mail: [email protected]
Džian Baban
Screenwriter
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