Martin Kohout

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The story of the Czechoslovak economic transformation of the 1990s, especially the famous method of coupon privatisation, which was both the core and a kind of signboard of this process.

In his provocative mosaic of opinions from different sides of the political spectrum, Martin Kohout reflects on where the ideals of November 1989 and the former sense of community have disappeared to. He tries to understand the progressive fragmentation of Czech society through two recent events. Both the parliamentary elections in 2017 and the subsequent direct election of the president made it clear that there is no consensus in the country today on even the most basic concepts such as "freedom" or "democracy". Sources of concern, ideas about the country's future direction, and the national myths on which cultural and political figures and disaffected voters rely all vary.

The director Tomáš Hlaváček is loosely building upon the time-lapse documentary Housing Against Everyone, in which he captured the dispute surrounding the Rapid Re-Housing project in Brno. The topic of decent housing for families in need is also addressed in The Impossibility. People occupying rental apartments in Brno's “Kuncovka” wanted hot water, electricity and fair negotiations. Instead, they received bullying and threats from the owner, who, in his own words, “does not like coloured people”. Neither the police nor the city helped them. So they joined forces with activists and lawyers to fight for their rights. Hlaváček chronicles the months-long conflict with its legal follow-up as an engaged observer.

A multi-portrait of the history of post-1989 Czech ideas and sensibilities, centered around left-wing Christian philosopher Karel Floss. Circling his ideas on God, truth, and politics like satellites are statements by strongly antithetical individuals including Milan Knížák, Ondřej Slačálek, Noam Chomsky, and Czech nationalist thinkers. Working with a subtle sense of irony, the film is openly inspired by the style of Karel Vachek as it makes use of semantic counterpoints, situational humor and aloof formal elements. The result is a kind of audiovisual riverbed for channeling the fury of a nation that recalls a child that is just learning to think and does not know what to relate to first, because in a certain sense, basically “everyone is right”.

This short vertical video presents the library of the Broumov monastery, combining documentary elements with 3D animation and synthetic commentary with a tinge of music. The internal directorial dialogue reflects Kohout’s own works of art exhibited as part of the Ora et lege project, which related contemporary art to the culture and teachings of the Benedictines.

At the time Moonwalk was uploaded the original scroll-bar had been corresponding to the video in whole duration. Since then youtube added new buttons to the interface and changed the format from 4:3 to 16:9.