ODVAHA (2015)

Pavel Štingl

(a brief filmography)

Pavel Štingl graduated from FAMU's Department of Documentary Film in 1985 with Learning to Be Fearful, a film about young medical students' search for ethical principles.

Following the revolution in 1989, he began working on a series of films from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc: Romania Libera and Quo Vadis, Romania...? won prizes at the 1990 festival in Budapest, and The Land without Graves won the jury prize at the 1991 Hiroshima International Film Festival.

The grand narratives of the 20th century are explored in A Student Love, a documentary from Albania, and An Ancient Story?, a portrait of Mrs. Josefa Slánská.
Greetings from the Country Where Yesterday Meant Tomorrow won the main prize at the 1993 Prix Italia Festival.
Štingl explored how World War II affected various people's lives in Four Pairs of Shoes, Failure, Three Friends, The Story of the Castaways from the Patria (winner of the 1998 FIAT/IFTA award), Mr. Pfitzner's Diary, A Story about a Bad Dream (main prize at the 2000 Japan Prix festival), The Second Life of Lidice, and What Language does the Lord Speak...?

In 2000–2004, Štingl shot the feature-length "amateur theater film" Peace to Their Souls.

Large documentary projects from recent years include Suchá Hora: A Village at the End of the Line (main prize at the Nadotek festival), A Ghetto Named Baluty (nominated for a Czech Lion; two awards at festivals in Poland). Both films won the Trilobit awards in 2008. In 2013, Štingl completed the animated documentary film Eugenic Minds.

Pavel Štingl has also created various multimedia projects for museums and memorials: And the Innocent Were Guilty for the Lidice Memorial Museum, Republic for a seasonal exhibition at the National Museum, and The Great War for an exhibition at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

Štingl's first documentary about art and artists was his portrait of blind artist Pavla Francová, Painting in the Dark. In 2003, he completed Description of a Struggle, about the creation of a monument to Franz Kafka. Boris Rösner's Theatre of Crazy Dramas was made in 2006, and The Road to Calvary, about the creation of 15 sculptures for a modern Stations of the Cross near Kuks, was completed in 2009.

Miroslav Janek

(born January 1954, Náchod)
Czech documentary director, cameraman and editor.
In 1969–1979, Janek made nearly 40 short films in Czechoslovakia. In 1980, he moved to the USA, where he worked as an editor and cameraman and shot a dozen independent films (Visitor, Heroes, Little City in Space, Now I Lay Me).
He worked as an editor on Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy (the feature-length documentary films Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi) and on Reggio's short film Anima Mundi.

Since 1993, Janek has been making hour-long documentaries for Czech Television, which have won numerous awards: Seven Ten Nečtiny, Heaven on Earth, The Unseen, I Am Hamsa, The Musicians, Man and his Master, Battle for Life, Scarlet Sails, and Vierka.

In his documentaries, Janek is more of a co-actor alongside his protagonists than a director. Sometimes his films lack a clear storyline and they are more like strips or collages of events.
Janek has been a permanent member of the FAMU teaching staff since 1998.

Janek's most successful recent films include Citizen Havel, Olga, and The Gospel According to Brabenec.