Architecture 18. MFDF Ji.hlava

photo: Michal Ureš, 2014

The subtitle of the 18th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava was "factory". “The factory is, for us, a multifaceted metaphor of today’s world and a sign that shows how our society has changed over the last 120 years,” commented festival director Marek Hovorka on this year’s concept in the press release. Compared to last year's colorful edition (with the subtitle "good harvest"), this time the festival visually stylized itself into somewhat gloomy black and white. The striking pictogrammatic graphic visual traditionally inspired a somewhat raw architectural visual, along with the economic (im)possibilities of the festival. The improvised interiors of the festival center in the building of the Vysocina Regional Gallery were equipped with maximum simplicity. The need for traditional marking of festival venues was fulfilled by various black geometric objects, resembling industrial semi-finished products – discarded castings, only bearing white stencil typography. Traditionally, the most significant entry associated with the festival into public space was located at the upper part of Masaryk Square. An extreme stylization of the festival symbol – a factory. The mysterious black object, which allowed entry and ascent through the “chimney,” became an attraction for Jihlava residents who do not usually wander into the festival cinemas.
The accompanying exhibition "Film Letters," which presented video correspondence between five pairs of significant world documentarians, had its own independent representation at the festival. The installation involved the creation of intimate individual “nests” for watching individual letters, a mini-cinema for a loop of the selected director pair (each day featured a meeting with the respective pair of directors as “Breakfast with...” and a presentation of brief profiles of all authors).