Movies by Jiří Stivín
Prague Blues
African student Omar would like to return home to Angola, but he is enrolled in a three-year postgraduate research fellowship at a clinic in Prague. One day while seeing off a friend at the airport, he and a girl named Mariama are brought together by chance as he offers to accompany her in an unfamiliar city toward the International Student Club, where she plays bass in a jazz orchestra.
Zpívali jsme Arizonu
Late Night Talks with Mother
Taking a cue from Franz Kafka's "Letter to My Father," this highly personal film follows Czech director Jan Nemec as he attempts to engage in a dialogue with his deceased mother. While alive, Nemec's mother had a troubled relationship with her son; this rumination seems to be Nemec's public platform for coming to terms with unresolved familial issues. The director embellishes his film by linking personal events with 20th century history.
The Town in White
Fugue on the Black Keys
Fati Farari, a black man from Africa, is completing his studies in classical piano at the Music Academy of Prague. It's the day before his first solo concert, where he is going to play Bach. While he strolls around the city he is thinking, not so much about the concert as about himself, both as a lonely foreigner and as a human being in cosmos. Here and there he encounters some racist comments, but mostly he just feels the weight of social exclusion because of his otherness, especially when it comes to women. On the morning of the day for hi...