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family

In the video They Read, he gradually and casually introduces several intergenerational pairs. Fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters speak about their origins and ability to speak their “native” languages. Members of the younger generation admit, in fluent, natural Czech or Slovak, that they’re not so confident when speaking the language of their parents – that it’s the “kitchen” dialect of the second generation of immigrants. And it’s these linguistic shifts that the artist sees as a symbol of the rift that appears between him and his parents.
Jiří David created this film for entirely personal reasons: as a gift for his father (who had shot the original footage) in order to raise his spirits as he suffered from an incurable illness. “The film’s creation was entirely unplanned. I took my father’s 8 mm films and transferred them onto VHS in the simple conditions of our flat: i.e., by projecting them on a screen and filming it with a VHS camera.”
A series of five videos about closeness and distance, it addresses the contradictions of the people who influence us most: our fathers believing they resolved the Mystery of Women, grandmothers who embody woman’s physical decline and the women, like Weil, who we admire but who, unlike the men, weren’t just allowed to be.