Helena Třeštíková
 Newsletter Dafilms.comEmbrace the world through documentary  The work of Helena Třeštíková has been a DAFilms staple since its beginnings. Her films have a rare ability to draw in viewers far beyond documentary audiences: by returning to the same people over years and decades, she compresses the unpredictability of real life into stories as thrilling as fiction.For Třeštíková, time is the material from which her films are made. Presented in collaboration with DOK Leipzig, where she was honoured this year with a retrospective, this online selection spans more than three decades of her work. It begins with the Tell Me Something About Yourself series and continues through some of her best-known long-term portraits, including Marcela, René, Katka, Private Universe and Mallory.Třeštíková’s long-term observation method depends on patience, trust and risk. She has spoken openly about the uncertainty of beginning a project without knowing whether anything resembling a story will emerge, and about the ethical complexity of remaining close to people in difficult circumstances while still observing them as a filmmaker.Her openness is part of what makes Třeštíková’s films unusually accessible, including to audiences who do not usually seek out documentary cinema. By condensing years, sometimes decades, of observation into feature-length films, Třeštíková turns the slow accumulation of ordinary experience into narratives that remain immediately legible: relationships change, ambitions shift, circumstances intervene. Her films derive their force from how precisely they reveal patterns of human behaviour over time.  KatkaHelena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUS14 years in the life of a drug addict. Katka is an extraordinarily raw and uncensored character portrait of a troubled young woman living on the edge, desperately searching for love and salvation. Will she find it in rehab? Will she find it in the arms of the man she loves? Or in the first cry of her long-desired baby? Tagging along with her through the back streets and squalors of Prague, the director gets deep under the skin of a person many of us would cross the road to avoid. RenéHelena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUS20 years of a life spent mainly in prisons. A man who starts over again and again, fails, becomes a writer and keeps challenging the director constantly.In 1989, Helena Treštíková starts to film juvenile delinquent René. For almost 20 years, she follows the rhythm of his life, most of which is spent in prisons, interrupted only by brief stretches of freedom. 20 years during which epoch-making social upheavals take place, systems, regimes and governments change – depicted by televised images that reach René’s cell.  MalloryHelena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUSAcclaimed director Helena Třeštíková follows Mallory for 13 years. Life hasn’t been easy on Mallory but after the birth of her son she tries desperately to quit drugs and to stop living on the street. She is determined to return to a normal life and turn her back on her dark past, whilst help those she knows best – people on the edges of society. Doomed BeautyJakub Hejna, Helena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUSDoomed Beauty can be seen as an examination of the life of an extraordinary woman and a description of how a person can be doomed by dramatic events that have been dealt to them by fate. Lida Baarova was one of the first film stars in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 1940s, which significantly influenced her future. She achieved success in her native country and in Germany alike, and had both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels fall in love with her. MarcelaHelena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUSThe life of Marcela, an ordinary Czech woman, is explored throughout several decades of her life. The documentary observes several important societal issues. We are engaged to struggle and fight back with Marcela as her tragic life unfolds before our eyes, particularly as she deals with her daughter’s unexpected death, which almost drives her to suicide. However, the responsibility she feels toward her retarded son gives her the will to survive. Private UniverseHelena TřeštíkováFILMMAKER IN FOCUSHonza was born in 1974 into the cheerless era of socialism in Czechoslovakia. A few years later, the family moved from Prague to Liberec where his father found a job and a little house for the family. When Honza was born, his father began writing a family chronicle and he has continued to do so for 37 years. Private Universe shows not only the life of one ordinary family but also how the Czech society has changed in the last four decades. Who are we, where do we come from and where do we go? |
