Czech documentaries awarded at international festivals in Autumn

At the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film the film co-production Cooking History by Peter Kerekes was awarded by the FIPRESCI Jury. The best films were also announced at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival – the winners of the Czech Joy section and the Audience Award which went to the czech documentary Auto*mate by Martin Mareček.

The FIPRESCI Jury (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (26. 10. - 01. 11. 2009) has awarded the Prize of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique to the film Cooking History by Peter Kerekes (Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic 2009), a documentary film about army cooks and how the everyday needs of thousands of armed stomachs affect the victories and defeats of statesmen. About the field kitchen as a model of a world where food preparation becomes a fight strategy; a fight for great ideals standing on strong legs of the kitchen table. The film is based on eleven recipes of the cooks since the Second World War till the war in Tchechenia; from France through the Balkans to Russia.

„The film convinced us with its inventive approach to a subject of such importace“, commented The Jury its decision.


The best films of the thirteenth year of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival were announced.

In the Czech Joy category, the jury selected the film I Love my Boring Life (Mám ráda nudný život, Jan Gogola Jr., Czech Republic 2009) about Alena Němcova's notes on the weather, dreams, exercising, cooking and other family and world events enter the film, which, like a river of surreal everyday life flow, tries to change rather than just capture reality, depicting different worlds living under one roof.

“In a unique way, the film thematizes both the transparency and impenetrability of the world’s surface and the human experience. The jury appreciates the almost zen-like balance of movement and stillness as well as the permeation of inward intimacy and external events,” the jury commented its verdict.

The jury has also awarded Special mention to the film Brain Fight (Souboj s mozkem, d. Jan Šípek, Czech Republic 2009). A threefold portrait, presenting the reality within the limits of a subjective view, puts together the lives of an increasingly more remote writer and musician; a hacker, dreaming his dream of transformation into a purely virtual existence in the depths of technology; and an undertaker, unrealistic raconteur, living on the history of half-mythical Sudetenland.

“In the field of science, for some it is hard to understand the difference between applied and basic research – while in the latter, revolutionary and unexpected discoveries are born. This film represents the basic research - in the best sense of the word - in the field of art. Despite its apparently personal theme, it penetrates the transpersonal paradoxes of human existence as well as the sources of human creativity,” agreed the jury.

The Audience Award was presented by chief programming director Alena Müllerová on behalf of the Czech Television, going to the film Auto*mate (d. Martin Mareček, Czech Republic 2009). A film of many styles, combining documentary with animation, jazzing up the time principle by provoking situations, tells a personal story of the director-biker as well as the journey of Auto*mat initiative from poetic demonstrations against cars to a constructive component of a living civic society.