Stone Guests is an ethnographic micro-study based on 15 interviews with inhabitants and visitors of Karlovy Vary as well as city representatives and historians. Our goal was to identify changing attitudes to the symbols of socialist past in a city with significant Russian presence. We were interested in emic explanations regarding the changing symbolic and material landscapes of Karlovy Vary. At the level of city administration, this film offers an example of post-socialist selection of appropriate (post-)political symbols.
This film was produced during Summer School of Ethnographic Filmmaking in Žlutice.

Paula Ďurinová is Slovak documentarist based in Bratislava, she has directed several documentary films and founded the Living documentary association. Petra L. Burzová is a member of Centre for Visual Ethnography and has been focusing on research in political science and cultural anthropology. Jiří Majer is anthropologist concentrating on the discourses of mental disorders. He has been doing his field research in Indonesia.

dialogues: Czech, Russian, subtitles: english
production: Studio vizuální etnografie SVIET, katedra antropologie, FF ZČU
directors, cameras: P. Ďurinová, P. Burzová, J. Majer

After having worked for 18 years in the U.S., the „sans-papier“ Richar returns to his country Ecuador with his new American wife. Although divorced from his former wife, he is still very attached to his three children.
The reunion with the family and with old friends shows in a personal way the tensions as well as the hopes and the courage to face the difficult reality of a migrant. The filmmaker, to whom Richar is linked by a friendship since an anthropological field reasearch 30 years ago, follows him during the first weeks of his return to his village in the Andes.

Hans-Jurg is born in Zurich, Switzerland. He studied cultural Anthropology in Zurich and Ecuador where he met the main character of the movie. He has made various documentaries.

Dialogues: Spanish, English, subtitles: English, Czech
Production: Prodok film, Zurich
Director, camera: Hans-Jurg Pffaf

At the blacksmith market in Maroua, in the Far North region of Cameroon the hammers clang all day long. Here the local blacksmiths turn scrap iron into objects for everyday use. Car bodies become wheelbarrows, truck wheels are transformed into ploughs and smaller pieces of scrap iron end up as spoons. The film is a portrait of Abakar, a young creative blacksmith pursuing his dream to medernize his workshop and to established a blacksmith enterprise. Following Abakar at the work at his workshop, at home with his family, at the meetings and exhibitions movie presents a persistent struggle of an individual to fulfill his  dreams of successful enterpreneurship, by bringing seemingly unusable pieces of iron back to life.

Konrad Pilot was born in Poland. He studied Social Anthropology with Philosophy and religion Studies as minors at the LMU in Munich, Germany and Visual Cultural Studies in Tromsø, Norway. Noise That Brings Money is his first film.

Dialogues: French, Fulfulde, subtitles: English, Czech
Production: Visuelle kulturstudier, University of Tromso, Norway
Director, camera: Konrad Pilot

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