Reality Shock

Colour, 35 mm
Germany, Poland, 2005, 79 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Documentary Films in Competition
Oficiální stránky: www.telepool.de

Synopsis

This absurd documentary comedy crowns the Eastern European trilogy by Stanislaw Mucha, whose first two parts, Absolut Warhola and The Center were screened at Karlovy Vary in previous years. This time, Mucha takes us to a wooded region of Poland and shows us a peculiar community of eccentrics who, thanks to the political and economic changes and the expansion of the European Union eastwards, have been deprived of their peaceful and wholly isolated stagnation. They seek contact with the “new era” in a somewhat confused yet decidedly original way. In a bar consecrated to Lenin, or in the company of cheerful gravediggers, Mucha’s film introduces us to outright “strangers”, for whom the concept of the European Union is just as unfathomable as the UFO which visited their village a few years ago.

About the director

Stanislaw Mucha (b. 1970, Nowy Targ, Poland) studied acting at the School of Dramatic Arts in Cracow (1989- 1993) and worked as a member of the company and assistant director at Cracow’s Old State Theatre (1994). From 1995 to 2000 he studied at the Film and Television School in Potsdam, and was awarded a grant to study at the Schloss Solitude Academy in Stuttgart in 1999. Filmography (documentaries, unless stated otherwise): Puppet Doctor (Lekarz lalek, 1995), Bausinn (1996, feature), Polnische Passion (1997), Der Tisch (1998, feature), Ein Wunder (1999), Back Home to the Reich with Bubi (Mit “Bubi” heim ins Reich, 2000), Absolut Warhola (2001), The Center (Die Mitte, 2004), Reality Shock (2005).