documentary filmmaker / researcher
lecturer in film & media practice at the University of Kent
PhD student in Film: Practice as Research
based in London / Prague
Loneliness of the Porcupines / Osamělost dikobrazů
2017 - Czech Republic - 26min
It is believed that porcupines can never be too close to each other in order not to hurt themselves. And it is also said, that the same can be applied to people. In the end, we are all alone.
Renata, Kateřina, Táňa and Alena - four women who in spite of not being alone, feel lonely.
Through their diverse perspectives, the film explores various forms of loneliness and solitude and examines how people perceive it.
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main competition selection: FAMUFEST 2017
Directed and written by:
ALŽBĚTA KOVANDOVÁ
Cinematography:
MARCEL BENES
Edited by:
ALŽBĚTA KOVANDOVÁ
Sound:
MARTIN STYBLO
Production Manager:
PAVLA KLIMEŠOVÁ
Producer:
ONDŘEJ ŠEJNOHA
'A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However, the cold drove them together again when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way, the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they, at last, the mutual need discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told—in the English phrase—to keep their distance. By this arrangement, the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied, but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer's Parerga und Paralipomena,
Volume II, Chapter XXXI, Section 396
