FREM

At the start: a few analogue pictures, as a sentimental reminder of us, of biological material, of things that once were and the ways we filmed them, before everything disappears. They are followed by a composition of crystal-clear digital images – overhead shots of the endless white expanse of the Antarctic, choreographed tracking shots, flights – revealing interference and digital effects here and there and accompanied by breathing, distorted sound and white noise. Maximum visibility: an eye that nothing escapes because of its potentially limitless focusing power and its ability to look in all directions, meets a landscape in the process of disappearing that is just as razor-sharp and simultaneously precarious as the overpowering, unstable images via which we survey it. Miniature people occasionally appear in the frame, survivors of a catastrophe that took hold of us at some point between the retreat of the dinosaurs and a possible future. FREM is a document, a poetic examination of imaging processes, and a science fiction film in one; with insistent radicality, it weaves together the imaginative realms of art and research, reality and fiction, depiction and the depicted.
by Viera Čákanyová
with Martin Kovačík
Czechia / Slovakia 2019 English 73’ Colour Documentary form

With

  • Martin Kovačík

Crew

Written and Directed by Viera Čákanyová
Cinematography Tomáš Klein, Viera Čákanyová
Editing Marek Šulík, Viera Čákanyová
Sound Design Miroslav Tóth, Dominik Dolejší, Stanislav Abrahám
Sound Dominik Dolejší
Producer Nina Numankadić
Co-Producer Ivan Ostrochovský
Co-Production Punkchart films Bratislava
Czech Television

Produced by

Hypermarket Film

Viera Čákanyová

Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (today Slovakia) in 1980. She studied Screenwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU) and received a bachelor’s degree in Documentary Film from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). Besides making her own films, she also works as script editor and editor for independent film productions.

Filmography

2006 Under Underground; 18 min. 2007 Piraňa (Piranha); 26 min. · Červi (Worms); 13 min. 2009 100 dní (100 Days); 22 min. · Alda; 52 min. 2011 Olda; 80 min. · Update; 45 min. 2014 Letiací kôň (Flying Horse); part of the film project Gottland, 30 min. · Rupicapra; part of the film project Slovakia 2.0, 10 min. 2019 FREM; 73 min. 2020 Biela na bielej (White on White); 74 min. 2023 Poznámky z Eremocénu (Notes from Eremocene); 78 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023