Pavel Koutecky Award/2

The winner of the award that carries the name of late Czech director, the man behind ”Citizen Havel”, is Linda Jablonska (photo), who previously (on this blog) is known for her ”Welcome to North Korea”. This text is taken from the IDF site:

“Earthlings, Who Are You Voting for?”, a documentary film by Linda Jablonská and a group of filmmakers with learning disabilities, is the recipient of the 2011 Pavel Koutecky Award. Selected out of 7 nominees and beating 100 submissions, the film also won the Audience Award at last year’s Jihlava IDFF.

And the description of the film: “Conquering Public Space – Documentalities” is a documentary project made by people who find it hard to get oriented in the world and who probably never were A students. To put it politically correct, they are mentally handicapped. That, however, does not prevent them from having an original perspective, sensitivity, curiosity and courage – all one needs to become a documentarist. During a six month documentary workshop of the civic association Inventura, a film was made under the supervision of documentarist Linda Jablonská, trying to prove that mentally handicapped people, too, can get oriented in the public space and have a political opinion of their own. We were following a phenomenon concerning all of us – the Czech parliamentary election. The documentality crew took part in the pre-election meetings, filming public inquiries with both citizens and politicians, discussing themes that would be considered “unusual” in other media. External cameras recorded all the events, such as the reactions of the bodyguards, supporters and opponents of the political parties. We were trying to find out whether political correctness and pre-election promises are but empty slogans, exploring the Czech society twenty years after the Velvet Revolution and the degree of its prejudice against anything that is not “completely normal”.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/documentary-network/articles/pavel-koutecky-award-goes-to-earthlings-1617/