Landscape of My Heart

In his latest film, a virtual fantasy applying modern technology once again, Jan Nemec probes even deeper into his own life than he did in his previous digital film Late Night Talks With Mother. The director uses his personal experience from a recent heart operation to discover what’s happening in his subconscious during a long surgical procedure. Coincidentally, his operation is taking place on the very day of the state visit to Prague by none other than George W. Bush. The director puts these two main storylines into a parallel flow and enriches them with images of his house, footage of films and photos from the streets of Prague. It is as if he were trying to see his own life like a film, the promised image of unconscious people. And above all, there’s an image of a waving hand helplessly trying to get a grip on reality. The director also provides personal commentary, recounting for us a few episodes from his life that occupied his mind during this crucial time. In this visual meditation, the journey teeters somewhere between life and death. The film is a technical experiment (using a unique construction of shots taken with classical 35mm still-camera photo equipment rather than a film camera) with which this director of the Czechoslovak New Wave continues his explorative film making. (LC)