El Estado soy Yo

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

The human form with its endless variety of expression, has fascinated the great masters throughout the centuries. Now the glory of the classic nude comes alive in this incredible cinematic "art book." Nudes in Limbo, an Original Program from MCA Home Video, is a breathtaking study of the body beautiful as never seen before. Through a series of imaginatively designed scenes, the male and female forms take on exciting abstract dimensions. Uncluttered limbo and natural backgrounds permit close study of each angle, while a rich musical score adds a lyrical touch to images of the most spectacular men and women ever captured on camera. It's a unique sensual experience that offers countless hours of captivating, inspired viewing.

The film accompanies Evgeny Mokhorev as he photographs people on the street in St. Petersburg in the tradition of Brassaï. In the next part he shares a deep insight in his way of working with nude models. The film features several series of outstanding and moving photographs by Evgeny Mokhorev about children and teens in St. Petersburg. In between the movie shows further interviews with honoured Art Collector Joseph Baio (Aperture Foundation), Nailya Alexander (Gallerist of Evgeny Mokhorev, New York), Ekaterina Kondranina (Curator, House of Photography, Moscow) and Dr. Irina Tchmyreva (Art Historian, Curator, Moscow).

"Play History" concerns the historical development of a particular landscape and the social, political and economic implications that inform it. Told from the perspective of a wandering narrator, who has arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne by accident, the film is a rumination on the interconnectedness of things.

An enigmatic glimpse of life through precarious vignettes, propelling a narrative through a nebulous and opaque structure that sutures the filmmaker's home movie footage to archival material—from Hollywood narrative films to political selfie videos. A handmade impression of a time suspended between past and present and the ghosts and places occupying it, contemplating the nature and meaning of vision, memory and image making.

Quite a few years have passed since November 1989. Czechoslovakia has been divided up and, in the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus’s right-wing government is in power. Karel Vachek follows on from his film New Hyperion, thus continuing his series of comprehensive film documentaries in which he maps out Czech society and its real and imagined elites in his own unique way.

Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.

A flickering dance of intriguing imagery brings to light the possibilities of ordinary movements from the everyday which appear, evolve and freeze before your eyes. Made entirely from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of moving image, All This Can Happen (2012) follows the footsteps of the protagonist from the short story 'The Walk' by Robert Walser. Juxtapositions, different speeds and split frame techniques convey the walker's state of mind as he encounters a world of hilarity, despair and ceaseless variety.

A fragmented collection of independent closed cinemas, in London during lockdown, captured on Super 8mm film.

Swimming, Dancing examines audiovisual representations of the Yangtze (1934–present), from silent film to video art to the contemporary vlog. Inspired by the city symphonies of the 1920s, Swimming, Dancing pieces together a “river symphony”, evoking the images, sounds and contradictions that make up the river’s turbulent history.

From the behavior, discourse, and appearance of individual actors, Vachek composes, in the form of a mosaic, a broad and many-layered film-argument about Czechoslovak democracy in the period of its rebirth, all administered with the director’s ini­mitable point of view.

A found-footage essay, Filmfarsi salvages low budget thrillers and melodramas suppressed following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.