Those Who Dance in Dark

Jana Ševčíková, producer, scriptwriter and director

Jana Ševčíková was born on 22 April 1953 in Prague. She graduated from the Secondary Technical Film School in Čimelice and (in 1983) from the Film Faculty (Documentary Dept.) of Prague´s Academy of Performing Arts.

Jana Ševčíková holds a unique place amongst Czech documentary film-makers. From her school days she had problems with her non-conjunctural view of the world attempting to get to the bottom of things. Amongst film professionals she is considered a one-off talent and personality which cannot be pigeon-holed within standard definitions and categories. She is totally independent and only gets involved in projects of which she is convinced „she must shoot”, by and large producing them herself, which in former Czechoslovakia was extremely difficult. Jana Ševčíková is very interested in ethnography and life under difficult circumstances. Her films evoke basic questions regarding human existence which touch people as individuals as well as a members of society throughout the world.

“ … The distinctive way in which Jana Ševčíková succeeds in transfiguring its subject, and thereby the spectator, honestly seems to me to be altogether without precedent in the history of non-fiction cinema. If one discerns elements of Flaherty, of Tarkovsky, of Peleshian, or of Sokhurov in her work, the particular way in which she combines her fluid, and often black-and-white cinematography, her haunting sound tracks, and the fragments of interview and exposition that reveal infinitely more about their subjects than their mere verbal content would suggest — all this represents a conjuncture of Art and Science that it is uniquely and unmistakably her own. In Jana's films, lebensweld and landscape dissolve ineluctably, as the mental and the material meld indelibly, into one another, and they do this with an intensity that I can only describe as sublime and hallucinatory… “
Harvard Film Archive, October 1, 2007, Introduction to Jana Ševčíková
Lucien Taylor
Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Professor of Anthropology, Director of Harvard's Film Study Center and Media Anthropology

Filmography:
2014 Lean a Ladder Against Heaven
Karlovy Vary IFF 2014
Czech Film Critics Award for the Best Documentary Film / 2015
Czech Lion Award for Best Documentary Film 2015

2008 Gyumri
Roma IFF 2008 - CULT Award – Cinema Della Realta
DOK Leipzig 2008, Rotterdam IFF 2009
One World Human Righs FF 2009 – Best director
Verzio FF Budapest 2009 – Main Prize – Anthropological Section a Student prize
Margaret Mead FF USA 2010
Harvard University, USA 2007

2002 The Rite of Spring
Jihlava IDFF 2002 - Audience award
Karlovy Vary IFF 2003, IFF Rotterdam 2003

2001 The Old Believers
Mannheim-Heidelberg IFF 2001 - Ecumenical Jury Special Mention
Telluride FF USA 2002
Cracow FF 2002 - Don Quixote Award
Milano price for the best document
Margaret Mead FF 2002, Museum of Modern Art NY 2002, Harvard University 2002

1992 Jakub
Karlovy Vary IFF 1992, Nyon Festival of Doc.Film 1992
Berlin IFF 1993,
Museum Of Modern Art NY 1993
Strassbourg FF 1994 - Prix de la Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles d’Alsace
+ Prix du Jury des Universités
Gyor Mediawave Festival Hungary 1994 - Prize of Minority Category
Society for Visual Anthropology Atlanta 1994 - Award of Excellence
Uppsala Short FF Sweden 1994 - Filmkaja for the best doc.film
Harvard University MA 2006/2007

1983 Piemule
London FF 1992, Margaret Mead FF NY 1992
Museum of Modern Art NY 1993
San Francisco IFF 1993,
Gyor Mediawave Festival Hungary 1994 - Prize in Minority Category
Alter-native FF Turgu Mures Romania 1994 - Prize for Best Documentary

more on www.janasevcikova.com