Internationally-exhibited artist Daria Martin is the granddaughter of Susi Stiassni, child of Alfred and Hermine Stiassni. The family – one of the three successful Jewish textile manufacturer families in the region – commissioned their Brno home from the famous functionalist architect Ernst Wiesner in 1929. Central figures in the industrial landscape and cultured high-society, the Vila Stiassni was and remains a hallmark of the glamour and wealth that the city of Brno enjoyed at that time.
With her new work, artist Daria Martin will re-stage a selection of her grandmother’s dreams within the Vila Stiassni itself, bringing this complex and rich history back to life. The show will comprise a film, a video game and even diary pages. The film will be shot on 16mm film but exhibited in HD.
The film has already premiered during the opening of the exhibition. GNOMON assured local production service. We are honoured to be around the project, that is deeply touching history of town, where we create and live. About the exhibition.
“Since I was a child, I admired my grandmother Susi Stiassni’s hefty dream diaries, to which she would add a new dream every morning. By the time she died in 2003, the shelf of them was heavy with dozens of binders: what amounted to recordings of many thousands of dreams throughout the latter half of her life. Luckily, she granted me permission to read them, and I was immediately struck by how vivid they were: her accounts rose from the page like literature. In fact, this massive accumulation of dreams was a life’s work.
In 2010 I made an essay film (‘One of the Things That Makes Me Doubt’) about the diaries that compared her private endeavour to my work realising fantasies on film, but I always wanted to return to the diaries to re-stage them. In 2017, I was invited along with other members of my family as well as the families LowBeer and Tugendhat for a ‘reunion’ around the Meeting Brno festival. Although I had visited Villa Stiassni back in 1995, this new encounter and its rich context reignited my curiosity about my grandmother’s history and childhood home. After fleeing Brno in 1938, she had visited Europe many times. Why had she never returned to Brno?”
From July 23 to July 27 took place the shooting of short movie Tonight the world ...
In April and June we made a series of recce for the upcoming shooting of the ...
Script, director Daria Martin
Performance director Joseph Alford
1st AD Jan Menšík
2nd AD Zdeňka Kujová
DP Alexander Šurkala
Camera assistant Marek Schnierer, Jan Skriečka, Petr Kačírek
Grip Pavel Proisel
Grip assistant Marek Novoměstský
Videoassistant Vladimír Polidar
Gaffer Vašek Enzo Čermák
Spark Zdeněk Vodvárka, Ruda Procházka
Art director Billur Turan
Costume designer, props coordinator Martina Zwyrtek
Head of wardrobe Karolína Srpková
Make-up Lenka Ngombele, Nicole Dytrychová
Props Jan Sebastian Frei
Set building Michal Procházka, Michal Nový, Petr Hlaváček, Stanislav Šmída
Photograher Anna Leader
Sound recordist Klára Jašková
Boom operator Pavel Vrtěl
Producer Laura Shacham, Jan Hubáček
Production Jan Bodnár, Zdeňka Kujová
Production assistant Karoline Wunschová, Kristýna Rudolfová
Lock up Ondřej Klus, Max Čuhel, Lucie Veselá, Ivana Nováková
Stunt services CZECH STUNTS s.r.o.
The project was realised with support by the South Moravian Film Endowment Fund. Shooting in the vila Stiassni and archive materials was provided by National heritage institute. Preparation of shooting is realised in cooperation with Film Office Brno. Project is created for Barbican Art Gallery in London.