An Earthy Paradise for the Eyes

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2009, 114 min
Section: Czech Films 2009-2010

Synopsis

Adolescence is always a difficult time; it is doubly so for Gábina. For one thing, she is growing up in the normalisation years of the 1970s, and then she also has to face the reality that her father is a well-known actor disavowed by the regime. Although he abandoned the family years before, his existence casts an ominous shadow over the lives of not only Gábina, but also her older sister and mother, who are trying to find a civilised way through the social mire of the times. Destiny and natural sympathies, however, lure them inevitably towards political dissent, which looks quite different from the accounts of it in history textbooks. An Earthy Paradise for the Eyes is based on the autobiographical novel by Tereza Boučková Indian Run (Indiánský běh, 1991), in which she reflects with detachment and self-irony on her own teenage years and her relationship with her father, the novelist and playwright Pavel Kohout. The viewer is thus able to look at a recent period in Czech history which the film evokes with a singularly meticulous eye.

About the director

Irena Pavlásková (b. 1960, Frýdek-Místek, CR) studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU but her interests have always steered her towards features. Her medium-length graduate film A Soap-Bubble World (Svět mýdlových bublinek) already provided the format for her fundamental theme, a fascination for the lives of strong and independent women. This was the theme of not only her debut film Time of the Servants (Čas sluhů), but also other films which moreover often reflect the lives of female characters during a critical time. Filmography: A Soap-Bubble World (1985), Time of the Servants (1989), Corpus Delicti (1991), An Unplanned Meeting (Nesmluvená setkání – TV film, 1994), A Time of Debts (Čas dluhů, 1998), Bestiarium (Bestiář, 2007), An Earthy Paradise for the Eyes.