Ócuka

Ócuka is a cinematic project that ranges between pictorial thoughts and reflected narratives.

Designed as a multi-part project, it exceeds a series of individual images in cinematic format. It is rather a portrait of individual thoughts, which are fragments of an attitude towards life and a view of the world at the same time, whose spirit is not exhausted by linear continuity.

Milan Mazúr works virtuosly at the limits of the medium of film and transcends it into an installation-like artistic expression. He establishes a format beyond conventional categories and inflexible narrative linearity, uniting a yearning individualisation with a holistic view.

The name „Ócuka“ originates from the novel „Kafka on the Shore“ by Haruki Murakamis, as it identifies with the figure of the cat.  Mazúr eludes to reproduce the literary motifs of the original novel as a dogmatic model, even though the work Ócuka is an entangled reference in its entire structure. It is the pictorial spirit and the metaphorical body of the literary source material that gives Mazúr the opportunity to create an overwhelming atmosphere in which the emotional emptiness of the individual characters and the mystifying obscurity of the plot strings create a captivating analogy to life. The outstanding camera work and scenes, literarily cut with surgical precision from living flesh, prove the outstanding skills of the filmmaker.

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me.” (Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami)

The story takes place in an undefined time and place.  An undisclosed scheme pushes the main character, embodied by <em>Elster Geister</em>, deeper and deeper into a complex plot, passing divergent places and into singular situations, in whose sequences the pathways of the figures take new directions all over again.

Every single scene describes with accurate precision and in a continuously different way the emptiness of a mind, on its journey to become something completely ambiguous, nevertheless embodying a philosophical ideology.</p> <p>Natural and industrial elements create the backdrop of the accompanying storyline whose conceptual path moves along the key themes of sleep, restlessness, consumption and hedonism.

Ócuka is far more than just a single cinematic work: it represents a time-based process whose separate segments are interconnected. Progressively developed in 2017, the project will end in 2018. The area surrounding the auditorium directly affects the specific appearance of the singular fragment of the main concept. Based on a series of thematic videos, new references will be created by adding site-specific videos. Content and context become a visual-conceptual environment. Human figures communicate in a distant speed, while slow motion accelerates the directed introspection of the recipient and establish an unconventional dimensionality.

Night flight, sleep, flight seats; One of the central videos: Night Travel, is a reaction to the incident of MH370 in March 2014: the aircraft which traceless disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia to Beijing. One of the most mysterious incidents of civil aviation might just be a part of a bigger story. But none of the puzzle pieces with its fragmentary actions is undoubtedly determined. Anytime an unexpected snap can twist the story to a new path.</p> <p> </p> <p>Czech actress Ester Geislerová, music producer David Doubek and Sarah Dubna took part in the film. The music for ÓCUKA was composed by the Slovak electronic producer Stroon.

Milan Mazúr studied intermedia with Miroslav Nicze at the Banská Bystrica Art Academy. He later graduated from the Atelier for Intermedial Confrontation under the direction of Jiří David and Milan Salák at the Academy of Arts in Prague.

Mazúr has won the Ex aequo prize for the film PAST (2012) at the International Festival of Experimental Film and Digital Art in Bratislava.