Česká republika, 2013, 31 min
M.Pavlásek
31.01.2015 18:20
Vojvodovo is a village in Bulgaria, inhabited in 1900 – 1950 by several hundred Czech Protestants. During their post-war re-emigration to the border areas of the South Moravia region of Czechoslovakia, they brought along with them the “spirit” of their world. The film tries to bring this world back through video-elicitation. Visual pictures of the Vojvodovo scene fade to the people who gradually fill the recording with the meaning of their experiences, just as a figurine symbolizing the community is being dressed in the film. Among the guardians of the legacy today, besides Vojvodovo and their offspring and descendants, are the professional ethnographers who have succumbed to the magic of Vojvodovo and who have taken part in the reconstruction of its picture with their texts. A similar role is played by the film itself, a multivocal visual narrative constructed both “here” and “there” (in South Moravia and in Bulgaria), another Vojvodovo. The aspect of geographic distance is suppressed, and in the foreground stands a mutuality distributed by professional ethnographers, the Internet, and meetings with (ex)Vojvodovians. All of which poses the question – where is Vojvodovo today?
Director, camera, script, edit: Michal Pavlásek
Production: The Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i.
Language of dialogues: Czech, Bulgarian
Language of subtitles: English
Michal Pavlásek is a researcher at Anthropictures – a flexible association of social scientists providing independent field research focused on visual and urban anthropology,
and a researcher at The Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i. Brno.