Czech Film Center

Synopsis

A playful film essay about our automobile-automatic society. A film crossing the border of its media,
turning into a social act. Martin Mareček: “I lived in downtown Prague, in the ‘heart of Europe.’ In Prague,
‘the mother of cities,’ as well as ‘the city of cars’... according to statistics, one of the most handicapped
cities in Europe. Six years ago, I met my neighbor in the hallway. He was moving: ‘Well, we’re off, we
can’t take this anymore.’ I replied: ‘Yeah, I understand, it’s the cars, isn’t it? That noise, that smell…’ The
neighbor smiled, puzzled: ‘Not really, it’s more that there’s nowhere to park.’ Is that story absurd? Is that
neighbor autistic? No. I think that most of us city folks are this automatic… We’re all in it… Automatically
we swear, automatically we drive. Slowly but surely, our game ends with our own auto-mate. Can anything
be done about that? I realized that to make a film is not enough. It will only turn into another short essay
automatically saying the well-known, addressing the usual receivers. Another submission into the
Intellectual Aquarium. Therefore, I’d slowly turn from a film director into a civilian activist, an artistic radical,
a political lobbyist. A multi-layered organism, Auto*Mate, was conceived.”