Tell me something about yourself - Martin or TO HAVE OR TO BE

Over the course of six years, the film-makers traced the story of a boy who hardly knew the meaning of freedom – he either spent his life in a children’s home or in prison. He never saw love or hope. Such deprivation could only bring grim consequences.

Martin was also imprisoned at the age of sixteen for stealing a substantial amount of costume jewellery in the factory where he worked. His life-long dream is to be rich and ride around in expensive cars, eat in posh restaurants and pour alcohol down himself. He stubbornly tries to attain a kitsch image. For his first „job“ he was sent to prison for three years. He is a clever lad, he acted in the theatre in Libkovice and he recites poetry. After amnesty he again goes for the sweet life and within two months he is in prison again. He spends a year drifting around in a prison where no-one works. He gets out, has his hair permed and begins to work in a car battery factory and he finds himself a girlfriend. He tries to get out of his bad social circle, but after a few months, he is again in prison... It is during this period that he turns to God. After his release he tries to link his life as a Christian with that of a playboy. There is no doubt of his faith, but there is also no doubt about the difficulty of the task he has set himself...

“The whole film describes the time from when they locked me up for the first time, at the age of sixteen, to the present, I’m twenty-two now. In all that time I was only out of prison for five months, and I’ve had just about enough. It’s also about how I gave up my life for Jesus Christ and how I let Him down, within myself, because I was always being tempted by worldly pleasures. It’s also about the fact that, whenever I managed to start a new life, they just locked me up again because it’s always too late. It’s just too late. That’s the real pity of it all, and that’s what the film is about…”

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