Czech Film Center

Synopsis

The reconstruction of Fotoatelier Seidel, a photography studio in Český Krumlov, and the
reappearance of a unique collection of almost 140,000 historic photographs provide not only
a springboard for telling the moving story of two photographers – father and son – but also a way
of bringing home to us lives lived long ago, and the lost culture of the Bohemian Forest
borderlands. It encourages us to ruminate on photography in general, not just as historical
evidence but also as a means of experiencing and remembering. It was January 2006. At that
time the pulse of the Seidel family’s life still lingered in the silent building with its Secession
studio, and the future appeared uncertain, just like the first uncertain spring flight of the bees in
frosty days. In the course of the three years spent filming, people who had once worked at the
studio and those whose family history is linked with the place gathered there. They are people
from both sides of the border who still remember Franz Seidel and his wife, people whose
testimony is extremely personal and reaches back to the time just after World War II. The
photographs found in Josef Seidel’s studio are priceless evidence of an epoch, mementos of
a destroyed culture, shaped for centuries by the natural landscape of the Bohemian Forest
borderlands. They are also becoming a bond between people on both sides of the Czech-
German frontier who are striving to save a common cultural inheritance.