Trace Evidence

Francis McKee investigates the case of Ester Krumbachová, a Czech screenwriter, director and artist silenced for twenty years by the authorities in Czechoslovakia, after 1970. In 2016, her personal material was retrieved and the work on her archive began. To recuperate her biography, it was necessary to piece together her papers, photographs and objects in a forensic manner. Krumbachová’s case was complicated by the fact that she was banned for her work on A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS (1966), a film that implicitly satirizes the secret police in Czechoslovakia. TRACE EVIDENCE tracks the attempts to piece together a life lived in a political, social and artistic void, sometimes under and sometimes beyond surveillance. It charts the tactics of resistance employed by the artist to forge an alternative, stable reality. It also considers the methods of archival investigation and the paradoxical nature of records as a means to surveil, document, preserve and oppress.

A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS will be screened on Monday, 12.6., 14:00 at Kino Arsenal.