Unfinished Love Letter

The film is an author’s collage of archival materials, documentaries films from the 1960s and 1970s, which look at the activities of the then Czechoslovakia in Syria in a propagandistic way.

Year of creation: 2020

video

Starring: Zeina Kawanati, Husam Abed Music: Cyril Kaplan feat. Husam Abed
Thanks to: Jindřich Chalupecký Society

More info

It is a lyrical retelling of propaganda based on intuitive-poetic starting points. Unfinished Love Letter is a more video-essayistic take on the Czechoslovak-Syrian relationships with usage of archival footage which reflects the long history of it and also the bitter end. Through the metaphor of a love letter, Jiří Žák explores the Czech-Syrian economic relationship and with it the question of what role the Czech arms industry played in it. Here he points out how political and economic elites have sought to downplay this part of Czech history and downplay the significance and extent of their cooperation, working with the tension created by confronting the image of a peaceful and insignificant Czech nation with historical and recent events that suggest otherwise. An unwritten love letter about the end of a relationship.

Where

Plato Gallery, Ostrava, CZ

The MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, HU

Budapest Gallery, HU

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