Uncle Tom’s Anamnesis


2015, Single channel video, 8 min.
Reviewed in Artforum online


Film inspired by object which belonged to artist’s uncle Tomáš Vačkář, who committed suicide in 1963 at age of 18. These objects - book Der Tunnel by Bernhardt Kellerman telling the story of building a tunnel between Europe and America; and a watercolour of a nightscape of an American city with it’s neons, are the dreams of a boy who could never cross the iron curtain, to see an American city for himself. The film is accompanied by the original music by Tomáš Vačkář “Concertino for flute and piano” recorded in 1967. It begins in a family archive and continues in New York, Paris metro and Prague’s first social housing buil in 1960s .