At the 29th edition of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, a newly published book from the editorial department of the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) will be presented. The publication reflects on the work of acclaimed Slovak documentarian Viera Čákanyová. Entitled Človek na okrAI with the subtitle Postantropocén Vierry Čákanyovej, it was written by film theorist Jana Dudková. This year’s edition of the Ji.hlava IDFF will take place from October 24 to November 2, with the book launch scheduled for Tuesday, October 28, at 8:00 p.m., before the screening of Čákanyová’s new film Bardo (2025). Both the author of the book and the director will attend the event.
Award-winning documentarian Viera Čákanyová studied screenwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and documentary filmmaking at FAMU in Prague. Her student films already received international recognition, winning awards at festivals such as Visions du Réel and Dokfest Kassel. Čákanyová made her feature debut with the experimental documentary FREM (2019), which, together with White on White (2020) and Notes from the Eremocene (2023), forms a post-human trilogy. All three films have been screened at prestigious documentary film festivals around the world and have won multiple awards. At this year’s Ji.hlava festival, Čákanyová’s new film Bardo (2025) will have its premiere. Like FREM and White on White, it will be presented in Ji.hlava, where White on White won the Best Documentary Film Award in the Opus Bonum section five years ago. Čákanyová’s documentary work stands out within Slovak cinema and attracts significant international attention.
The monograph by Jana Dudková, Človek na okrAI: Postantropocén Viery Čákanyovej, offers an analysis of the director’s work, which brings to Slovak cinema a reflection on the need for a post-humanist re-evaluation of humanity’s role and fate in the history of the planet. Dudková discusses Čákanyová’s films against the backdrop of current thinking in post- and transhumanism, ecocriticism, and new materialism, as well as in relation to the concepts of the Anthropocene and Post-Anthropocene.
“At the heart of the book is Čákanyová’s trilogy, which, to put it simply, explores questions of human survival on Earth in the context of climate anxiety, the rise of artificial intelligence, the crisis of democracy, and the pervasive extensions of human self-centeredness and colonial approaches to the world we inhabit,” explains Jana Dudková, head of the Department of Science and Research at the Slovak Film Institute, about why she decided to dedicate a book-length study to Čákanyová’s work. “But even this trilogy doesn’t exhaust what fascinates me most about Viera’s work. What strikes me most, even after studying her student and television films, is how incredibly stylistically and thematically diverse her filmmaking is and yet it opens up a wide range of questions I find crucial for our times: not only the ones mentioned, but also very fundamental ones such as: What is authorship? What is film? What does it mean to be human? How can we act responsibly toward the planet while creating art? For whom do we create at all? Who is the addressee of our statements – and will they understand us?”
The book consists of four chapters, complemented by an interview between the author and the director. The first chapter discusses Čákanyová’s current work in the context of her early development, analyzing her films from both formal and thematic perspectives. The next chapter focuses on Čákanyová’s well-known trilogy (FREM, White on White, Notes from the Eremocene) through the lens of the opposition between the artificial and the artistic. The subsequent chapters explore specific questions concerning the redefinition of humanity’s role in the context of planetary concerns, through the opposition nature vs. culture, and introduce the concept of a transpersonal perspective as a unique contribution to ecocritical cinema. As in most of her scholarly work, Dudková in the book combines “a hermeneutic approach with thematic analysis, and – given the subject matter of Čákanyová’s films – I also engage with various philosophical debates on posthumanism, ecocriticism, hybrid cinema, the film essay, and post-cinema theory, ” explains Dudková, describing the methodological approach to Čákanyová’s films.
According to Jana Dudková, Viera Čákanyová is one of the most intriguing figures in contemporary Slovak cinema. The monograph builds on several earlier academic studies dedicated to her work. The publication is also intended for readers who may not be familiar with current audiovisual production: “The reader I had in mind doesn’t necessarily need to know Viera’s work in detail, or even be familiar with contemporary audiovisual art, but should care about the state of our planet, the direction humanity is heading, and the essence of our ambivalent humanity. The book is meant to serve as a lightly philosophical guide in searching for answers to such questions. It may suggest certain answers, but it’s up to the reader to continue seeking them beyond, accompanied by Viera’s films. In the context of Slovak as well as international cinema, the book can also serve as an invitation to discover other works, as posthumanism and criticism of the Anthropocene are becoming increasingly prominent in documentary, fiction, and animated films,” Dudková explains.
The publication Človek na okrAI with the subtitle Postantropocén Viery Čákanyovej is published by the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) in its Camera Obscura series. The 297-page book includes an extensive scholarly apparatus, photographs from Čákanyová’s films, and her filmography. It was published in cooperation with the Institute of Theatre and Film Research of the Art Research Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS). The publication was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, the Audiovisual Fund, and the Slovak Audiovisual Producers’ Association.
The publication was financially supported by the Audiovisual Fund.
