People Next Door 2017 / Nespatřené / Czech Republic 1996
A report from the world of visually impaired children attending the Jaroslav Ježek school in Prague who have taken up photography as a hobby. Their photographs help create new bridges between the two islands of our world: between the seen and the unseen.
The Unseen shows us the world of visually impaired children attending the Jaroslav Ježek School in Prague. They have taken up photography as a hobby thanks to the interest shown in them by photographer Daniela Horníčková. Their pictures help create new bridges between the two islands of our world: between the seen and the unseen. But the effort becomes meaningful only when steps forwards are taken on both sides. Although the film focuses more on the different motivations and experiences of the visually impaired photographers, the actual shooting process becomes the subject of a fascinating audiovisual dialogue between the creators and their world. The participation which the movie asks of its audience is free of any sentiment and, beyond the human context, leads to questions concerning new-found meanings for concepts that are often interchanged: to create, to make a film and to take a photograph.
MFF KV
53 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Miroslav Janek
/ Screenplay Daniela Horníčková
/ Dir. of Photography Miroslav Janek
/ Editor Tonička Janková
/ Producer Kateřina Ondřejková
/ Production Česká televize
/ Sales Czech Television - Telexport
Miroslav Janek (b. 1954, Náchod, Czechoslovakia) began as an amateur filmmaker. In 1980 he emigrated to the United States where he worked with a number of documentarists (e.g. Godfrey Reggio); he has worked back in his homeland since the mid-1990s. He enjoyed great success with his film about sight-impaired photographers The Unseen (1996 – Best Documentary Film ex aequo at KVIFF). Janek’s extensive filmography of documentaries presented at KVIFF includes Crimson Sails (2001), Kha-chee-pae (2005), Citizen Havel (2008), and The Confessions of Kateryna K. (2008). KVIFF also screened his portraits of director Drahomíra Vihanová (Burning, 2012), Olga Havlová (Olga, 2014), and Vratislav Brabenec (The Gospel According to Brabenec, 2014), as well as the documentary Film Spa (2015), shot for KVIFF’s 50th jubilee. Janek’s latest work Normal Autistic Film (2016) competed in KVIFF’s Documentary Film Competition.
Czech Television - Telexport
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Czech Republic
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E-mail: [email protected]
Miroslav Janek
Film Director
Daniela Horníčková
Petra Štovíková
Festival Organizer, Producer, TV Representative
David Berenreiter
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