AFO Friday: Dancing Elements, Nagano, and Love in the Digital Age

If you have not already done so during the first half of the festival, now is the best time to visit the Immersive Zone at the Red Church. It’s here where you find the epicentre of the Immersive Media Competition with six unique immersive projects. Would you like to try diagnosing an illness or test your empathy? Then go for the Anamnesis project! Or know if you would survive on the surface of a distant planet? If so, MAMLAS-1 is just for you. Other themes include the climate crisis, human progress, and nuclear waste storage as a hazard. Open from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.!

Modern technologies are not only part of the programme directly but are also the subject of some films. One beautiful programme in which the past and the present notions of AI meet is the double feature of The Mechanical Man and Eternal You. The first and partly lost film from 1921 is about a scientist who attempts to create an artificial man, while the second film is a true contemporary documentary that inspects the possibilities of technology and the ethical limits of “communicating with the dead”. The screening of both films will take place from 1.00 p.m. at the Czech Television Film Hall. What is more, you can carry on with the tech round from 4.00 p.m. at the Sedmička Hall with criminologist and psychologist Ainize Martínez Soto who will host a lecture called Love in the Time of Apps. What will come under scrutiny includes digital intimacy, sexting, ghosting, positive as well as negative aspects of online dating, and much more!

Another thematic union of a short and a feature film will appear in the section Diagnosis: Unknown which focuses on diseases and health problems that are difficult to diagnose. The short film called Womb+ and the feature Endometriosis – Hope for New Therapies follow stories of women who have been dealing with chronic pain which is often downplayed or considered a “natural” part of the female body. These films aim to destigmatise women’s health and the expert care it requires and strive for equality in this matter. To know more, attend the event in the Theatre Hall at Konvikt at 5.30 p.m. and stay for a debate with professionals. If you look for sport, however, come to the Metropol Cinema at 6.00 p.m. to reminisce about Nagano – the reason why ice hockey sits among the most popular Czech sports. Ondřej Hudeček’s The Nagano Tapes continue to be an extremely entertaining, touching, and formally fierce archival documentary film that will make all fans of this sport shed a tear in the best and the greatest way possible.

Lastly, you can end your Friday at AFO in style and return to the Metropol Cinema at 8.30 p.m. for the screening of a documentary titled Phenomena. This purely modern scientific film inspects the fascinating world under the microscope with electronic music as a backdrop. It is an audiovisually unique and stimulating viewing experience which showcases experiments, chemical reactions, and real-life physics through filmography and will be attended by its director Josef Gatti and producer Jessica Harrop from Sandbox.

And after all that, there will be a lot of music, dancing, and so on. Enjoy the AFO Friday to its fullest!