Magnificent7 2013/6
The 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival ended Sunday night at the big hall of the Belgrade Sava Centre. Manuel von Stürler presented his ”Winter Nomads” followed by Helena Trestikova’s ”Private Universe”. For the first film, that the European Film Academy voted to be the Best Documentary Film of 2012, and that is this week being released in cinemas in France, around 1000 spectators attended the screening that included a small lamb entering the stage to be saluted by von Stürler and animal lover, festival director Zoran Popovic!
Trestikova’s film was watched by around 900 enthusiastic viewers, who followed the life of an ordinary Czech family over a period of more than 30 years on the background of the country’s history from 1968, Husak, Havel, EU etc.
Staying for a moment with the statistics, the festival augmented its number of viewers with around 10% from 2012 going up to about 6000 – for 7 screenings!
This monday morning the festival held masterclasses with von Stürler and Trestikova. The latter took us, in a very well prepared presentation with 11 scenes from her films, through her work of long-time observation. She showed us clips from ”Marcela”, ”Katka” and ”René” (Best European Documentary in 2008) and talked about the ethical questions connected to being so close to her characters, helping them ”outside” the film as well, to get on the right track in their lives. Trestikova said that she did not really consider herself as a filmmaker, more as a chronicler, who has new films coming up this year and has plans to continue to film René and maybe also the family in ”Private Universe”. Deep respect for Trestikova for a constant non-tabloid humanistic focus on people outside the celebrity spotlight.
Several of her films are available on the vod DocAlliance:
