A dreamlike ballad with a touch of bitter comedy — about truth, freedom, the joy of living, faith in human beings, and the hope that there may still be a next time (based on the novel Na krásné modré Dřevnici by Antonín Bajaja, published in English as Burying the Season). An art film with no linear plot! The screenplay was written in 2020 with the support of the Film Fund of the City of Zlín.

Antonín Bajaja /1942-2022/, author of the source novel, received the Czech State Prize for Literature for Na krásné modré Dřevnici and the Magnesia Litera Prize for the novel Zvlčení. The English edition of the novel, Burying the Season, was launched in London by the playwright Tom Stoppard.

Locations

Czech Republic: the city of Zlín and its surroundings, including the Bajaja and Hlavnička villas; the Hostýnské hills; and the Zboženské ponds.

Slovakia: the High Tatras (TANAP — Tatra National Park), chiefly Štrbské pleso, Villa Marina, Hotel Solisko, the Grand Hotel Starý Smokovec, the Grandhotel Kempinski, and the Dr. Guhr Sanatorium in Tatranská Polianka.

The film crew meeting Antonín Bajaja in Zlín, spring 2020

The story. In the 1950s, the Jewish-Catholic family of Dr. Bajaja is persecuted by the regime and, like their friends, stripped of property, standing, and freedom. And yet they build a safe harbour — a happy childhood for their children, Antonín and Jana, whose grandparents had come home from America in 1910 out of pure patriotism, with no idea of what the century held in store. Years later, as a grown man — now Tony — Antonín finds a diary of letters written to his sister Jana, now Jeanne. Childhood comes flooding back: a paradise of the senses, of first loves and friendships, of dreams and schemes, of resolve and disappointment, of cruelty and helplessness, of awakening and joy. The family stirs back to life — and so do their friends, and their enemies. The children plot a revolution against the grown-ups for making them shovel snow off the pavements. Antonín, his head muddled by ideology at school, wants to denounce his own family for listening to Radio Free Europe. Jana, dreaming of drama school, recites propaganda verse. Their world drifts high above the world of adults — until history, and the regime's "truth-lies," reach up and pull it down.

Near the end of his life, Tony sets out with Jeanne — now living with Alzheimer's — on a journey into the Tatras, retracing the past. Its leitmotif is the slow unravelling of everything that came before, and a hope for change that quietly burns out. Another of the film's protagonists is the river Dřevnice itself — the river along which Baťa built one of the most progressive modern cities in the Europe of its day — woven deep into the fate of every character, whose credo is to live, not merely to survive!

The Czech title "Chmýří " (the englhlish equivlent would be "Thistledown" or "Poplar fluff") is a metaphor for the fleetingness of life, and an echo of the seed that falls either on fertile ground or on bare rock. In Zlín, the white down of the poplars along the Dřevnice is a signature of the place, drifting through the streets each spring. The central themes of the film and the screenplay are the closeness of a family; the fierce bond between siblings, children, parents, and grandparents; the joy of living; friendship; a sense of honour, of homeland, and of truth; courage, bravery — and cowardice; love of one's birthplace; nature as part of human lives; humour as a vital necessity; and the journey, never the destination! This imaginative ballad is a dreamlike act of remembering and the telling of one life and the fateful people gathered around it. Plot gives way to fragments of image that coil non-linearly around the axis of the hero's life across a century. Childhood leaps into adulthood and back, setting a child's eye against a grown one's. The stream of thought in adult Tony's inner voice draws a line through space and time; it does not explain, does not lecture, does not comment. With the gentle irony of surreal flashbacks and plainly real images, it brushes against history and private life alike. The film's key words are light; the atmosphere born of image, music, and actors fused together; the flow of thought; the power of poetry; song; counterpoint; the emotional charge of a moment; the inner life of the characters; pain as a path; the longing for beauty and harmony; and the search for one's own place on Earth.

The film is being made under the patronage of Martin Tolar, MD, PhD, founder of Alzheon, Inc. (Boston, USA) and Tolion Health, Inc. (USA). He has agreed to appear in the film as his own grandfather, Dr. Tolar, chief of internal medicine at the Baťa Hospital in Zlín.

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