Private Universe

Helena Třeštíková – Director’s Note

“As a documentary film director I have long specialised in using the time-lapse shooting method. This method brings new possibilities to a documentary. It adds a motion, variety and story to the material shot in the documentary mode. When shooting a time-lapse documentary, my creative approach is based on developing as deep as possible relationship with my heroes to obtain an intimate and utterly sincere testimony.

The short film Miracle stood at the very beginning of my efforts to shoot films during a longer period. The film describes three months of pregnancy, birth and four months of life with the new baby. After the film had been released, I decided to capture on camera the life of the family from time to time just out of curiosity.

The project Private Universe follows from the collected material and show the current fate of my protagonists during several years. This film shows the longest part of a life I have ever followed – 37 years. During those 37 years the child whose birth was captured by the film grew up to be a man. When he was 15, his country saw the end of the Stalinist socialism; when he was 30, the country accessed the European Union.

In this film I would like to capture both these changes in parallel. The private lives of our protagonist Honza, whose birth we witnessed, and of his family, as well as the dramatic developments of his home country in Central Europe.

My intent as the author is to use film language to make a link between the past and the present, to capture on camera the passing of time and changes in people and landscape. I would like to use this film as a tool to interlink the private and public aspects of life.

In addition to that, the film should make a reflection on the passing of time and living life to the fullest. It should be a reflection on the efforts to find our place in this world. We will combine observation with static film making, colour and black & white.“