A most undefinable and hallucinatory work by Němec, in which he dives into the visionary world of the Czech painter and leading light of both Czech and French surrealism Marie Čermínová (1902-1980). An avant-garde personality, she also challenged the traditional gender roles, taking the enigmatic gender-free name Toyen and becoming one of the few female faces of the surrealist movement.
Following her aesthetic principles, Němec radically breaks with the conventions of biopic and with the retro genre as well. Fully aware that any artist biopic would always be a poor illustration of a character’s life, as any true artist is unapproachable, he instead makes a kaleidoscope of different images, related and unrelated to reality at once. Archival fragments, re-enactments, Čermínová’s paintings and her poetic works, as well as other materials and textures converge and diffuse in this ghostly film which, in the words of Toyen, could have been called ‘Splinters of Dreams’ or even ‘Silence and Darkness’.
Film details
- Country of production
- Czech Republic
- Year
- 2005
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2017
- Length
- 63"
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
You may also like this
-
Diamonds of the Night
Two Jewish boys escape the train taking them to a Nazi concentration camp. Devastated and lost, they try to find their way through a hostile and co
-
Ester Krumbachová Through the Eyes of Jan Němec
The muse and co-creator of the best works from the Czechoslovak New Wave, credited for giving the Wave its distinct look, is portrayed here by her
-
Flames of Royal Love
The marriage between an eccentric prince and a diabolical cleaning lady leads to debauch in the royal family. This adaptation of Ladislav Kl&#