Fotojatka is a small travelling festival that, for the past ten years, has screened great photos in cinemas, cafés and clubs.
An night of projections of an original selection from the best in international and Czech creative and documentary photography that oscillates somewhere between a lecture, stand-up comedy, improvised awkwardness and attempts at solving unexpected technical problems.
We don’t play intellectuals, we make Fotojatka for everyone even remotely interested in photography.
Portrait, conceptual photography, documentary or humour – but always different from what you’d expect.
This year we're organizing the festival as an experiment without money. And since we have no money for promotion and printing, you can help us promoting Fotojatka. Just click DOWNLOADS in the menu to learn more.
So far this is known:
Havlíčkův Brod / OKO club / Saturday 12. 5. 2018 / 19:30
Plzeň / Papírna Plzeň / Friday 5. 5. 2018 / 19:30
Horní Bečva / an ITF slideshow night / Friday 27. 4. 2018 / something like 20:00
Opava / Kupé (culture and art space) / Thursday 26. 4. 2018 / 20:00
Olomouc / Kratochvíle tearoom / Saturday 14. 4. 2018 / 19:30
Liberec / Stereo Cafe / Saturday 24. 3. 2018 / 19:30
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Praha / Aero cinema / Friday 20th October, 2017 / 20:00 (already took place)České Budějovice / Kotva cinema / Wednesday 25th October, 2017 / 20:00 / buy tickets >>
Brno / Trojka café / Friday 3rd November, 2017 / 19:00
In Iran, girls are legally responsible from eight years of age. When sentenced to death, they're waiting for coming of age - and the execution - in a detention center.
Records from a photographic diary of Benoit P. become - thanks to colour flashes and the author's original vision - a newly created reality.
Restricted areas of the former Soviet Union: debris, snow and radioactivity. Places where the better tomorrow that never came true was being built.
Have you ever been in a tax heaven?
This duo of photographers travelled fairly all of them and now they're inviting you for a tour.
There's something wrong here. The author describes his lively nightmares
as "an open-ended interpretation of figures and shapes", his works are "more materials than photographs, or maybe even photographs of installations".
Latvia seen through a different lens than how travelogues show it. Actually, it's doesn't even matter it's Lithuania. These subtle quotidian elegies might have taken place anywhere.
Tweed jackets, plastics, neon colours, giant glasses and a lot of leatherette. In short - a trip into the beauty and elegance a few decades back.
A report from places where, after forty years of communism, the West clashed with the East, brought to you by one of the most renowned Czech documentary photographers.
Romanian neighbourhoods, trips to work and back, still lifes and stories from a Hungarian vet, who happens to be one of the world's most famous photoamateurs.
The landscape is being invaded by pylons, bridges, cisterns, megaboards... It's getting harder and harder to find a place devoid of them. Where will they stop? But - aren't they actually beautiful?
The renowned Dutch author travelled back to Africa, where she spent her childhood, to create a series balancing between documentary and staged photography, illusion and reality, beauty and peculiarity...
This California-based Spanish photographer travelled the whole world to create his impressionistic series - and he managed with only Google Street View and Photoshop.
Needless to say, family photos are usually dead boring. Except when someone like Michaela Spurná gets hold of the camera.
2007-2014
Fotojatka festival was born in the town of České Budějovice (Budweis) and in its first year, it mainly presented local photographers’ work. Since 2008, however, it started to focus on creative and documentary photography from the Czech Republic as well as from the rest of the world and spread its wings to Brno and Praha, with projections of „echoes of Fotojatka“ taking place in many other towns. Despite its weird name („Fotojatka“ meaning something like „Photographic Slaughterhouse“) the festival has never projected photography depicting explicit violence, wildly uncomprehensible or specifically „underground“ series – the main criteria in choosing photographic series was to select works that will address a wide audience without unnecessary descriptions, but, at the same time, that are notably different and stand out among the works of most photographers.
The main difference between Fotojatka and other festivals is in the way photography is presented: instead of exhibiting prints, the series are projected onto film screen, with carefully selected musical or soundscape accompaniment, which emphasizes the emotional impact of the photos. Each slideshow is preceded by a spoken introduction, but the projection itself is uncommented.
During its existence, Fotojatka has presented the works of almost a hundred photographers. The list includes a number of noted Czech photographers (Antonín Kratochvíl, Jindřich Štreit, Jiří Stach, Jiří Hanke...) as well as some of the most renowned international artists (Anders Petersen, Erwin Olaf, Michael Ackerman, Sergey Maximishin, Nikos Economopoulos, Chema Madoz...), however, the festival also tries to acquaint the audience with interesting works by younger authors, often winners of prestigious international awards (International Photo Award, World Press Photo...).
This year, for the first time, Fotojatka is being organized with no money involved at all. All authors kindly lent their works for screening for free, the organizers work for free. All admission will be given to the cinemas and clubs to cover their operation costs.
Web archive
2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007
(sorry for only partial functionality or disfunctionality of some of the webs - they're retired pensioners now, you know)
Download, print and colour your own posters! Use your B&W printer or a copy machine, glue or tape together for larger formats and use a pink marker to your liking to spice up the graphics.
PDF for Fotojatka in Prague
PDF for Fotojatka in Brno
PDF for Fotojatka in Č. Budějovice
Universal PDF poster
(fill in the time and place)
Download, print, cut and colour your own leaflets! Use your B&W printer or a copy machine, cut into thirds and use a pink marker to your liking to spice up the graphics.
PDF for Fotojatka in Prague
PDF for Fotojatka in Brno
PDF for Fotojatka in Č. Budějovice
Universal PDF leaflets
(fill in the time and place)
Download the festival teaser as an MP4 video (FullHD) and screen it in your cinema or club few weeks prior to the Fotojatka night! (17 MB, 24 seconds)
See the teaser here on YouTube.
This year, the festival is being organized solely by Jan Flaška, who works with the authors, makes their slideshows, sees to the web, hosts the festival nights and organizes all the technical and non-technical stuff around Fotojatka. If you want to talk to someone from Fotojatka, he's the guy.
His mail is flaska at email dot cz, his phone number is +420 777 637 108.
We're on facebook and youtube.
(Nothing else.)
(Not even tinder.)