Tell me something about yourself - Lada

Lada is a typical product of the institutions known as „educational“ or „corrective“. Not only is he not educated nor corrected, he simply does not understand anything about life. He solves his problems in his own way - by swallowing sharp objects. He does experience love, however, - according to all the tried and tested rules of the Red Library. Love, passion, prison bars...

Ladislav has an innocent face but he's actually quite a difficult character. He tried all sorts of tricks in his youth...He ran away from home when he was six and started stealing. Then he began committing robbery with assault, then came the drinks and the drugs. When we met him he was in prison for the second time and he was constantly being given some prison punishment, particularly for self-abuse. He would cut himself up, take overdoses and so on. He kept on promising to make himself better and that he now knew how to. After amnesty Lada went missing and soon the police were after him. It was not long before he was in prison again. This time he brightened up his stay by swallowing spoons and wires (always followed by an operation in the prison hospital). He also renewed his relationship with a friend from his youth who had been sent to a prison in Pardubice. She, too, swallows spoons - and we are told of her experiences from prison and hospital. Not long before he was released Lada proclaimed that he now knew how to live properly, that he never wanted to live like an animal ever again!

He met another girl after his release, they lived under bridges and from Salvation Army aid; occasionally they found some „jobs“ but both of them eventually ended up in prison once more...

A new stage in the love correspondence - from one prison to the next...

A unique film series begun by director Helena Trestikova in the spring of 1989 using an unusual and singular technique whereby the lives of the film subjects are filmed over a number of years and told within the confines of one film. The material was filmed in a correctional facility for young people in Libkovice over a period of between two and five years. The films capture not only the changes in the lives of the individual protagonists, but also the changes to the whole of society.

© F&S Foundation