The 19th Audiovisual Arts Festival has the honor to showcase recent moving image work in a variety of mediums by the students at The Center for AudioVisual Studies (CAS), part of the film school FAMU, Czech Republic’s national film school and one of three faculties within the Academy of Performing Arts In Prague. Celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, FAMU is one of the world’s first film schools and consistently included in the Hollywood Reporter’s top fifteen internationally and often considered the top film school in Europe.
CAS studies are divided equally between theory and practice. Roughly 30 Bachelor and Master’s degree students create contemporary artworks using film and video, sound, game engines, ‘new media’, installation for the cinema, gallery or site specific and public space. Bachelor studies focus on history, theory and technical skills as applied to audiovision. Master’s students use artistic research and theoretical approaches as the rubric within which they create. Graduates go on to careers in the contemporary arts as practitioners - working artists, curators, preservationists, in various roles in national cultural institutions, opening their own businesses or as academics and teachers. This year our department celebrates its 20th anniversary with a major exhibition, screenings and a book devoted to our student’s and teacher’s works.
The showcased works, designed for cinematic presentation, as well as possible exhibition in installation contexts, are:
1. Pelvic chain - dir, Marie-Anna Šulc, 7 min, 2024, colour, Czech with English Subtitles.
Bachelor degree graduation work
A dream of the anarchy of nerves, muscles and tissues, gripped by the shell of institutions and prejudices, but also by the remedies used by contemporary medicine, materializes in a demonstration of the possibilities of controlling the robust machine of a motorcycle. The diary account of the vicissitudes of recovery and the struggle to reconnect with one's own body is also a reflection on the ability to accept and share pain.
bio: Marie-Anna Šulc is a graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. Her current practice critically engages the body as a site of vulnerability, resistance, and situated knowledge. She explores inner imagination and the poetics of embodiment, foregrounding the body as a space of adaptation, limitation, and ongoing transformation. Her work interrogates normative constructs of ability, autonomy, and representation.
2. Intermezzo 2.0 - dir. Tara Šelířová, 20 min., 2025, colour, English.
Bachelor degree graduation work
With the deadly comet slowly approaching, the world’s days are soon to be remembered as… undone? What happens when the end stops being an event and becomes a permanent state of unresolved in-between?
The 20-minute animated film combines the aesthetics of 3D animation, glitch, and the phenomenon of liminal places. Through this approach, it opens up an introspective story of a young artist who is stuck on a song meant for the comet’s arrival. Here, in a cityscape overwhelmed by warnings and collapsing systems, the anticipated end of the world becomes more of a media event than an actual catastrophe. Perhaps, at last, an honest song might be able to create the moment out of the seemingly looped state of everyday.
bio: Tara Šelířová is a Prague-based audiovisual artist and student at FAMU (Center for Audiovisual Studies). Her work explores digital liminality, affective economies, and the transformation of identity in contemporary media, with a focus on animation as a modular and constructed medium. She combines theoretical research with experimental audiovisual practice.
3. Time Metallurgist - dir. Tomáš Rampula, 10.43 min., 2024, colour, English, CineScope.
Master degree graduation work
Time Metallurgist leverages AI to work with archival footage and materials from the life of Eadweard Muybridge, attempting to reconstruct the pivotal events of the late 19th century in California and their profound influence on our present. Muybridge, famed for his ground-breaking motion photography, arrived in the Wild West at the invitation of Leland Stanford, the visionary behind the transcontinental railroad. This monumental project not only revolutionized transportation but also played a central role in the tragic displacement and massacre of Indigenous peoples and the near extinction of bison. Stanford later founded Stanford University, which would go on to become a global hub for advancements in cybernetics and artificial intelligence. Through Muybridge's lens, we are guided through these turbulent and transformative times, revealing the deep interconnections between history, technology, and the world we live in today.
bio: Tomáš Rampula, b. 1977, Prague, is an artist deeply committed to creative exploration and the intersection of art, technology, and storytelling. His artistic journey began with an initial interest in architecture, and study at the CVUT Faculty of Architecture in Prague from 1996-99. In 2009, he found his creative sanctuary at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, where he pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Screen-Based Art, 2009-13. During this period, his focus expanded to the fusion of architecture, sound, and space, using installations and videos as mediums to explore philosophical questions surrounding emergence, technology, and perception. Driven by his desire to integrate technology into storytelling, Tomas continued his education at FAMU, the Film School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague at at the Center for AudioVisual Studies, earning a Bachelor's degree in 2020 and in 2024 his Master of Arts (MgA). There he developed a distinctive approach to cinematic art, incorporating cutting-edge tools including game engines, photogrammetry, and CGI to craft immersive and thought-provoking works.
4. Land of Abandonment I.: Girl with a Whip - dir. Eliska Lubojatzka, 8.11 min., 2024, colour, Czech with English Subtitles.
1st year Master degree work
The first part of the four-chapter anthological fusion of fairy tale, drama, and cinepoem tells the intimate story of a girl in a surreal landscape. Through an introspective monologue, she outlines the circumstances of her trauma and coping mechanism, personified by an anthropomorphic whip. The complete film, including all four chapters of Land of Abandonment will be presented as her graduating Master’s degree work in June 2026.
bio: Eliška Lubojatzká is a filmmaker and audiovisual artist, currently enrolled in the Master’s programme at the Centre for AudioVisual Studies at FAMU. Her first short film, Zagovory (2021), was selected for the Other Visions competition at the Film Animation and Contemporary Art Show (PAF) and premiered at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF). In 2023, she was chosen to participate in FID Campus, an international residency program for young filmmakers organised by the Festival International de Cinéma (FID) in Marseille, France. Her second film, Lilith and the Body, was screened in the Czechoslovak 16 competition section at the BRNO16 festival and presented as part of the SFC Rendez-vous Industry forum at the Cannes festival. The first part of her upcoming film, The Land of Abandonment, was selected for the Silver Lynx Competition at the FEST - New Directors/New Films Festival in Portugal, where it obtained an Honourable Mention in the experimental film section. During her studies, she completed an exchange program in Denmark and attended the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Her work explores themes related to mythology, identity, feminism, memory, and aesthetics influenced by fairy tales and dreamlike environments.
