Date: 30.07.2025
Beginning: 19:00
“This story really happened. Or did it?” asks Jonathan Frakes dramatically in the TV series Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, a show that captured the imagination of viewers around the turn of the millennium. The format combined mysteries, moral allegories, and urban legends, and after each segment, invited audiences to guess – what was true and what was pure invention.
“You only see our stories one way? But your point of view can change. Are you confused? Don’t worry. You’ll be in the picture.”
The screening program presented at etc. gallery borrows not only the show’s title, but also its central gesture – offering a sequence of images and narratives that resemble reality, and yet subvert, reshape, or rewrite it. Not to deceive us, but to reveal how easily we allow ourselves to be deceived.
Beyond Belief is not a program about falsehood, but about the mechanics of trust. About what makes an image believable. About how fiction can look like reality – and reality like a staged construct. The three works in the screening selection move between formal languages and genres – between documentary and fiction, archival material and its rewriting, directorial manipulation and performative uncertainty. They work with irony, absurdity, exaggeration, and shifting meaning as method. Girls at a bus stop, forced to wear medical uniforms; television personalities shedding their masks off-camera; an island that may have existed only in the dreams of socialist technocrats.
In a world flooded with images, what matters is not only what we see, but how we are led to see it. The presented works disrupt genre conventions and subvert viewer expectations, blurring the boundaries between reality and its representation. Here, both humor and disorientation serve as tools for destabilizing trust in what is perceived as “real” – and as an invitation to reconsider the very concept of trust in a media-saturated world.
“Can you tell the truth from fiction? Try it. Watch the following stories – and believe it or not.”
Michal Pěchouček: Obvyklé rukojmí / The Usual Hostages, 2001, 13’28”
The Usual Hostages is a silent “microdrama” situated between documentary and fiction. Over the course of a year, several girls are repeatedly forced to dress in medical uniforms bearing their names at a deserted bus stop. The work functions as a metaphor for forced adaptation, gender roles, and institutionalization. It contains a strong performative element — the girls are clearly instructed on how to behave, with their uncertainty becoming part of the expression. The artist uses directorial manipulation as a creative gesture, and its exposure is an integral part of the piece.
Brian Springer: Spin, 1995, 57’30”
Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contempt for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV outtakes, appropriated from network satellite feeds, unravel the tightly spun fabric of television—a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors, and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. riots and the floating TV talk show that was the 1992 U.S. presidential election.
You can watch the full film online at Films For Action website.
Adéla Babanová: Where Did the Stewardess Fall From?, 2014, 12′
The video is an imaginary interview with Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant who was the sole survivor of a 1972 airliner crash near Česká Kamenice. The conversation between the nearly fully recovered Vesna and a doctor and investigator turns into an exercise in reconstructing her lost memory. Both interpretations of the plane crash presented in the film are based on publicly available records. However, the interview results in the subtle manipulation of a person without memory, who has no choice but to rely on information from others.
At the gallery screening, Adéla Babanová’s video Return to Adriaport (2013, 14’23”) was presented.
Screening: July 30, 2025, 7 pm (etc. gallery, Sarajevská 16, Prague 2)
Online screening: July 31 – August 6, 2025
Curator: Nela Klajbanová
Graphic design: Nela Klímová
Translation and subtitle timing: Markéta Effenbergerová
Production: Sára Märc, Tereza Vinklárková
The image used in the cover graphic is a still from The Usual Hostages by Michal Pěchouček.
The project is supported by the City of Prague, Prague 2 District, and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
