66 Seasons

Colour, 35 mm
Slovak Republic, 2003, 86 min
Section: Documentary Competition
Oficiální stránky: www.66seasons.com

Synopsis

This documentary film about Stará plovárna (Old Swimming Pool) in Košice, where, in the words of the filmmaker, “…history came to bathe”, was made over the last three summer seasons. Seen through several stories which unfolded between the years 1936 and 2002, the film captures 66 seasons at the popular swimming pool, and also the same number of years in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. The film is supported by the reminiscences of several visitors to the “Čéháčko”, as the pool was known, which the film crew try to reconstruct years later. The swimming pool thus acquires another metaphysical dimension – it resembles a model of the world where, with greater intensity, private stories merge with universal history (for example, the bombing of Košice during the Second World War or the Russian invasion of 1968).  Different generations of swimmers replaced one another over the course of the decades, only the craving for water as a place of absolute equality and also a source of security remains just as strong.

About the director

Peter Kerekes (b. 1973, Košice) studied film direction at the School of Performing Arts in Bratislava in the years 1991-1998, where he recently lectured and was involved in the founding of a feature and documentary film studio with director Dušan Hanák. Filmography: A Man about Book, A Book about Man (1994), Balog Jozsef, Príbenník 66 (1996), About Three Days in Jasov Monastery (1996), Morytats and Legends of Ladomirová (1998), The Mary-Valery Bridge (2000), Zuzana from 8am to 5pm (2000), 66 Seasons (2003); producer : Origin of the World (dir. Katarína Kerekesová, 2002); collaboration: I Am from Nowhere (dir. Georg Misch, 2002).