The exhibition draws the audience’s attention to film as an integral form of contemporary art through an “improvised” movie theater designed for viewing moving images from a fixed vantage point—ideally alongside other viewers and from start to finish.

While preparing this project, we asked ourselves the following questions: How can a contemporary art gallery respond to the demands that film places on both artists and audiences? How can a gallery encourage viewers to maintain sustained and focused attention? Is a film screening still an exhibition, or does the gallery transform into a film club for a certain period of time? Does the experience of watching a film in a gallery differ from watching it in a movie theater? And how might the very meaning of film change when presented in this context?

The program for our “cinema” took shape through an ongoing dialogue within the curatorial team, with a special emphasis on the diversity of themes, the variety of cinematic languages, and the artistic strategies characteristic of the individual selected works. The selection therefore follows both the fundamental curatorial themes that PLATO has explored over the years and the individual interests and approaches of the team members. The project’s title refers to our online publishing platform Octopus Press.

October 22 – November 3, 2026
King Matýsek the First / Król Maciuś Pierwszy
Jaśmina Wójcik / Poland / 2025 / 75 min. / Polish, Czech subtitles / poetic documentary

Can we, as adults, truly remember what it’s like to be a child? And above all: what can children teach us if we simply listen to their words? These are the questions posed more than a century ago by the prominent Polish-Jewish educator, physician, and writer Janusz Korczak (born Henryk Goldszmit). His children’s book King Matýsek the First inspired Jaśmina Wojcik’s film, which invites us into a world free from the hierarchies and limitations of the adult world. It offers a contemplative journey guided primarily by curiosity and emotion, in which the senses serve as essential tools for discovery. In the background, however, contemporary crises—wars, pandemics, and climate disasters—resonate ominously.

Screening times: 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:30 PM, 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and on Wednesday also at 6:00 PM

November 4–8, 2026
Ostrava Kamera Oko
The 18th edition of the international film festival focused on showcasing cinematographic works. In partnership with PLATO.

November 10 – December 6, 2026
Double Feature
Kinetopsie (2024) and Solar Sound System (2025)
Tomáš Svoboda / Czech Republic / 30 and 25 min. / Czech, English subtitles / experimental feature films

This pair of medium-length experimental films by Tomáš Svoboda, an intermedia artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, humorously explores the nature and impact of the social and political dynamics of the 1990s. Kinetopsie returns, in the form of a voyeuristic investigation, to the figure of the well-known Prague businessman and mobster Ivan Jonák and the fate of his nightclub, Discoland Sylvie. Solar Sound System reflects on the documentary genre by presenting a fictional event in the style of a serious documentary film. The question of what might have happened if the violent police crackdown on CzechTek in 2005 had led to a radical transformation of our society contains a great deal of irony, but points toward utopia.

Screening times: 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:30 PM, 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and on Wednesday also at 6:00 PM

December 8, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Do You Have a Lion at Home?
Pavel Hobl / Czechoslovakia / 1963 / 76 min. / Czech / children’s, feature film, adventure

When two little boys set out on a trip through Prague, the city transforms into a space where everyday reality blends with fantasy. Director Pavel Hobl’s 1963 feature debut Do You Have a Lion at Home? is a playful modern fairy tale that combines children’s imagination with the experimental poetics of the New Wave. The mosaic-like narrative is a celebration of children’s free-spirited imagination, which refuses to be constrained by adults’ notions of what reality looks like. The film is one of the most original—yet today nearly forgotten—titles of 1960s Czech cinema.

Screening times: 10:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 2:30PM, 4:30 PM, and on Wednesday also at 6:30 PM

January 5 – February 7, 2027
Double Feature
New Inflation /
Liv Schulman / Argentina / 2021 / 63 min. / English, Czech subtitles / satirical performance

The film The New Inflation, filmed with non-actors in Omaza, USA, draws on the filmmaker’s experiences with Argentine inflation—as both a market and emotional phenomenon, a national obsession whose volatility directly reflects the economic ties between Argentina and the United States. Delirious monologues full of jargon and often illogical turns of phrase recall the manifestational dialogues of New Wave films and present economic processes as a shared fiction.

El Brujo
Louidgi Beltrame / Peru, France / 2016 / 11 min. 27 sec. / performative film video

The film El Brujo connects two physical journeys: the pilgrimage of Peruvian healer José Levis Picón Saguma and the walk of iconic French New Wave actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. The shaman’s run reimagines a famous scene from François Truffaut’s film Nobody Loves Me (1959), in which Léaud appeared as a child. The geometric lines of a Peruvian archaeological site intersect here with Léaud’s ordinary yet profoundly acted stroll through Paris as an old man. Both trajectories merge in the film into a single plane in which time, space, and even identity itself dissolve.

The films El Brujo (2016) by Louidgi Beltrame and The New Inflation (2021) by Liv Schulman reflect on the transformative power of cinema and ask whether the medium of film can convey energy across borders.

Screening times: 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:30 PM, 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and on Wednesdays also at 6:00 PM

February 9–28, 2027
Landscape Depressions
Janis Rafa / Netherlands / 2023 / 26 min. / Greek, with Czech subtitles / fictional drama

At first glance, the natural landscape in which the film is set is, in fact, the result of a major human intervention: the construction of a dam. In the film Landscape Depressions, people fall into a deep, undisturbed sleep that renders them passive, while animals take over both the space and the landscape. The title of this film by a Greek artist is a play on words referring to a geological term denoting an area that lies lower than its surroundings and forms a certain type of natural lake.

Screening times: 10:30 AM, 11:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 1:30 PM, 2:30 PM, 3:30 PM, 4:30 PM, and on Wednesday also at 5:30 PM and 6:30 PM