Fotojatka hits the streets on April 25th

In České Budějovice, you can look forward to the traditional Thursday outdoor screenings. We will meet in Na Sadech park at 8PM where the first projection will take place and then move to Piaristické náměstí for the second projection. Have a look at the map:

Prague festival night is over

The Prague Fotojatka show took place on April 5th in Aero cinema – with Jiří Hanke, Cecylia Malik, Jan Langer and Akos Czigany joining us in person, only Jiří Turek didn't arrive.

It would be great if other audiences we've ever had took inspiration from the audience that night: the spectators were just great. Despite the problems of the cinema's technical equipment, caused by China and its products, most spectators endured several involuntary intermissions, several bad jokes of the presenter and nervous commotion of the organizers and technicians. They didn't give up until the end of the evening at 11:30 PM.

Thanks a lot, everyone!

PS: The authors loved the atmosphere, too.

 

Brno: the first festival night is over

So. Fotojatka 2013 in Brno is over.

The Great Friday, March 29th, 2013 – the only date we could come from our hometown of České Budějovice to Brno – and the following Easter weekend was the reason that students fled the town, which resulted in a slightly less crowded cinema, though it was still almost full.

The authors who came in person were Jiří Hanke from Kladno, who discussed his work with the audience, and Jan Langer – however, Jan Langer came on Sunday to find in horror that Fotojatka had already taken place on Friday, so he turned around and went back home...

Thanks to the audience for coming – and for being great audience.

Photos are by Martin Šálek.

our teaser will tease you

...with its professional amateurism. We have never had a worse one, and considering the quality of the previous ones, that says something! Moreover, it's in Czech only.

Share and enjoy.

(if the playback is jerky, lower the video quality)

buy the tickets. and that's an order.

Starting March 7th, you can buy tickets for Fotojatka in Brno's Art cinema. The prices are the same as last year: 120 Kč for students and war veterans, 140 Kč for normal people. Of course, we would love to throw the photo party for free, but we somehow need to cover the cinema rent and author's fees and stuff. But you'll get a programme brochure, an original Fotojatka badge and maybe even something else. We'll see.

the authors are complete

Hurrah! Yes, we are overjoyed, so to say.

We've managed to round up the list of authors - and what authors! - with two great names: Jiří Turek, a well-known Czech photographer, who will bring his famous cityLAB series, and Cecylia Malik, Polish performer, painter, activist and photographer with her 365 Trees which proves that she is also an unbelievable tree climber.

oh my God, We have a press release!

Find it in Pressroom.

Now we're working on the festival video jingle. It will be, well, unusual, to say the least.

Fotojatka 2013 is in the making

At the first glance it might not seem so, but since September, we have been chasing, persuading and reminding the authors, we have been trying to come up with new graphical design which would keep the continuity (read: which would still be pink and easy to change on the web), we have been thinking of the festival spot, we have been writing grant applications and sorting out previous years' accounting and all in all, we have been so busy that we had no time to update the website. However, these times are over and THIS is the new Fotojatka 2013 website.

Meet the authors - or at least some of them - in the right menu. Clicking their name will reveal some information on them plus a teaser set of their photos.

Oh, and by the way, if this page looks too big on your netbook screen, press Ctrl and the scroll wheel on your mouse.

Fotojatka dates

brno / Friday March 29th, 2013 / art cinema / 19:00

Screening night will take in Art cinema, at the moment we do not plan other events in Brno as we are not locals and organizing more is beyond our possibilities. Read more here >>

praha / Friday April 5th, 2013 / Aero cinema / 19:00

Slideshows will take place in the famous Aero cinema. Like in Brno, we do not plan workshops or lectures there, but if you want to help us, contact us. Read more about the Prague night here >>

české budějovice / Thursday April 25th–Saturday April 27th, 2013 / Kotva cinema and elsewhere

Look forward to the screening night on Friday, preceded by outdoor projections on Thursday and followed by workshops and lectures on Saturday, not to mention night outdoor screening with pig roasting and an afterparty in Slavie club! Read more here >>

Meanwhile...

watch the slideshows from previous years!

The section Slideshows online offers you the opportunity to watch slideshows of many of the authors that participated in Fotojatka during the previous year - in HD on YouTube. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Have a look then...

What was the festival like in 2012?

On Friday 16th, 2012, the audience in Art cinema (Brno) greeted us with their usual warm welcome and filled the house to the top; people were sitting even on the stairs. Lina Németh and Daniel Šperl appeared in person for a debate with the audiece. About ten enthusiasts joined the weekend workshop focused on subjective documentary.They only had some 24 hours to shoot, select, adjust and present a compact series on the topic of one’s own personal space. We would like to thank David Maixner and David Mužík for organizing and supervising the event. You can find the results of the workshop here.

Prague’s Aero cinema with a reconstructed café was almost empty just before 7PM on Friday, March 30th, 2012. Apparently, the local audience likes to come late: during the first two slideshows, the seats became occupied and the cinema filled up with people. Lina Németh, Daniel Šperl and Jiří Stach were there with us to answer the questions of the spectators.

The final part started in České Budějovice on Thursday, 12th of April, 2012. The ominous all-day cold rain threatened our evening open-air projections, but at 5PM the clouds vanished and clear sky and lukewarm air invited us and Kvelb Theatre’s rung-wheeled wooden tank to occupy two of the town’s squares – Mariánské and Piaristické – and screen some of the best slideshows from the previous years right on building facades. While our graphics designer Milan Krištůfek took the position of a lieutenant in the tank tower who preaches creative photography and manipulates the public, Jakub Lada Vavřina from The Good Tearoom gave out selected teas for free from his tea-cycle.

The packed Kotva cinema witnessed a great night of photographic slideshows; we were honoured to meet (among others) the Polish photographer Grzegorz Klatka in person and Daniel Šperl, who also opened his solo exhibition in the cinema foyer.

On Saturday, Horká vana club invited everyone eager to try creative photography in real life – the workshop Impulzzz made the participants visualize topics like Titanic, Subject: public, Depressed little animals, The poetry of the Spring, A different landscape or Consumerism – all within two hours and the limits of the town centre. Have a look at a selection of the results:

The workshop was followed by two great lectures given by two great lecturers: Jan Pohribný and Tomáš Pospěch, both renowned photographers and theoreticians, teaching at the Institute of Creative Photography, a part of The Silesian University in Opava. Both lectures dealt with unusual approaches towards landscape photography – while Jan Pohribný focused on the more traditional side of the genre, Tomáš Pospěch spoke about coping with its clichés and conceptual landscape photography. The lecturers didn’t compete with each other – just the opposite, in about three hours they provided the audience with a brief, but comprehensive review of the approaches towards landscape in photography of the last two decades.

After the lectures, the attendants moved to the yard of the house U Beránka for a pig roasting. The hygienic limits set to us by the town hall officials (because of smoke etc.) made us use a rubber toy pig and several candles. Fortunately, a real bio-piglet from Pístiny was just being baked in the brick oven in the yard to please the tongues of the visitors with its extra tasty parts. Silent photo projections of the best of previous years was accompanied by lentil salad made by Jakub Vavřina according to his exclusive recipe.

The authors who appeared on Fotojatka in person included Jiří Stach, who surprised and entertained the spectators with his detailed description of the methods used for creating of his photographs, Lina Németh, talking about the circumstances of shooting her Arinella beach series, Daniel Šperl, who uncovered the background of some of his famous black-and-white shots and in Budějovice also opened an exhibition of his photographs from Japan. Besides that, during the Fotojatka month, we managed to turn him into a kitten lover so that he started to speculate that his next book will be "all kittens". Iren Stehli, while not present in person, joined us at least thanks to a (fake) "telebridge", while Grzegorz Klatka came from Poland alive and in a long debate he talked about the oddities of the Czech national character.

We were glad to have met enthusiastic audience in all of the cities and would like to thank all of you for coming to the festival. We would also love to thank all the authors who contributed their great works and have made Fotojatka what it is.