I Love My Boring Life

Director's Note:

“The subject of “Breathless” represents a challenge to express the idea that we live a hurried - i.e. not quite our own - life if we succumb to the conventions of the time, give up our individuality and merely survive. Diaries are generally an example of processing the world in one's own way, in its commonplace and timeless aspects. I also think that – based on the creative filmmaking experience with the Nemec family whom I have known for ten years – we can succeed in making both, an entertaining and a serious film about the possible worlds within one house. This intention is all the more intriguing for it will take place in an ordinary household environment and in my films I have always been trying to transform, not just to record reality.”

Mentor's Note:

As far as the other, the Czech side is concerned, I am most excited, how Jan Gogola and his team will handle the visual challenge of his project, apart from the diary pages’ substance which is already known to be impressive. But as he has always managed to show the oddities of life on the screen, and will do so in the future as well, in an entertaining and surprising way and in close touch with reality, I am confident and I am looking forward to his film. By the way, both projects have one joint ingredient: the filmic trace element of charm.

(Peter Badel/ DOP, Germany)

Production Notes:

Short Synopsis:

Using informal language, for five years grandmother Alena Němcová from Zbraslav has been writing down weather forecasts, dreams, morning exercise, recipes, regular house bustle, global events as well as notes concerning relationships, religion and the general spirit of the age. The diary is intriguing for the ways it connects matters of a private, family, social, real and also surreal nature. The film aims to show that the borders of the world are defined by the borders of our perception.

Long Synopsis:

Our aim is to capture the life in a house in the Prague neighbourhood of Zbraslav as a place that could represent a slice of the world and merge various events and connections, both of a daily and timeless nature. As a point of departure, we use the diary of grandmother Alena Nemcová from Zbraslav and the film “ The Diary of Grandmother Nemcová” that I made ten years ago as our "script". The film from 1999 was based on the diary of Jirina Nemcová – Alena`s mother-in-law. The diaries of both women come from the same house and they both nclude notes about matters of a private, family, social, real and also surreal nature. We see these as an opportunity to shoot a film that will point out that banality can indeed be part of our perception but not of the world itself. Our device is just a change of banality to singularity.

Using informal language, for five years grandmother Alena Nemcová has been writing down weather forecasts, dreams, details of her morning exercise, cooking, regular house bustle, global events as well as notes concerning relationships, religion and the general spirit of the age. In a way, she follows on from the diary of Jirina Nemcová her mother-in-law, written in the same house between 1977 and 1997 that became the "script" for my film “The Diary of Grandmother Nemcová” (1999). Both diaries are intriguing for the way they at once blend facts that are both, funny and serious, personal and social, daily and timeless. Take, for example, an entry that says that God is found everywhere around us and that good work is also a form of prayer. The very next line is about the author’s son Pepa – he and his family live on the ground floor of Alena’s house – who fell asleep and snores in the bathtub again.

We understand the continuation of both the diary and the film as a compression of time and space in this particular house that, thanks to this continuity, keeps expanding into multiple forms of other possible worlds. Just as in the first film, we again want to express – not only through the situations unfolding before the camera but also using the essence of the entries that keep changing based on the filmmaking style – that only the borders of our perception define the borders of our world.

Jan Gogola:

Jan Gogola, born in 1971, is working as director, script editor and lecturer at FAMU (Film and TV school of Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague; formerly a commissioning editor for Czech TV, he resumed his filmmaking career last year. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism, Charles University and from the Department of Documentary Films at FAMU. As a script editor Gogola has been involved in the making of numerous documentaries, e.g., Czech Dream (dir. Filip Remuda, Vít Klusák); 66 Seasons (dir. Peter Kerekes); Cooking History (dir. Peter Kerekes); Lost Holiday (dir. Lucie Králová); Private Century (dir. Jan Šikl), and others.

Zdeněk Marek:

Zdeněk Marek was born in 1964. Occasionally dabbling as an actor, he has edited numerous feature as well as documentary films. Filmography: Palác Akropolis (2008, dir. Jana Počtová); Eldorádo / Eldorado (2008, dir. Zdeněk Tyc); Panic je nanic / Virginity Sucks (2006, dir. Ivo Macharáček); Podvraťáci (2005, dir. Ivo Macharáček); Český sen / Czech Dream (2004, dir. Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák); Silný kafe / Bitter Coffee (2004, dir. Börkur Gunnarsson); Národ sobě aneb České moře v osmnácti přílivech / Nation to Itself, or 18 High Tides of the Czech Sea (2003, dir. Jan Gogola); Ničeho nelituji / No Regrets (2003, dir. Theodora Remundová); Nonstop (2002, dir. Jan Gogola); Panenka proti zbytku světa / Panenka Against the Rest of the World (2001, dir. Jan Gogola); Motocyklení (2000, dir. Markéta Válková); Deník babičky Němcové / Diary of Grandmother Němcová (1999, dir. Jan Gogola).

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