Review: Worldstar (2007)

Director: Natasa von Kopp | 52 minutes | documentary

“World star”, in certain circles Miroslav Tichy has become with his paintings and – especially – his black and white photographs. Director Natasa von Kopp tries to find out who the man really is in “Worldstar” by visiting him in his hermit’s den.

The film opens with fascinating black and white images, Miroslav appears as a small white figure against a black background. A little later we see the area where he lives, the town and nature, filmed in color. When we arrive at Tichy’s house, the film turns black and white again, with striking photographic images of the defective home and Tichy’s minimal self-sufficiency that manifests itself, for example, in two different worn out slippers. Throughout the documentary, the contrast between the vibrant, colorful outside world and Tichy’s closed black and white world will be maintained, with just a little added color to show that the photos scattered across the floor in his room are actually black and white. to be.

Who was / is Tichy? At first glance, a terribly gruff, nihilistic man. He doesn’t believe in anything: not in God, not in feelings, not even in art. All he does all day long is consume alcohol. He snarls at neighbors and gallery owners who, against their better judgment, would like to get in touch with the artist. Most of what we learn about Tichy’s past comes from neighbors and from a lecture at an exhibition opening. Thus, a different image of the man emerges, the neighbors say that he used to try to entertain them with jokes and the gallery owner says that during the communist regime, Tichy was constantly confronted with repression, to the extent that he even went to a psychiatric institution. was sent. As a viewer you can draw your own conclusions, for example: this obnoxious man who wants nothing more to do with the art world will have become like this because the sacrifices he had to make for art were too great. On the other hand, when you hear lonely Tichy say that he has never been in love and that feelings have never interested him, you also get the idea that the man owes it to himself.

Von Kopp does a lot of things well: the cinematography is perfect, she involves the man as well as his work and the result of his work (through the gallery owners) in her documentary and she really seems to have built some kind of connection with Tichy. All this makes “Worldstar” a fascinating documentary. The only question is who. People who admire Tichy’s work might be better off not seeing how unkind the man behind it is, while for people who don’t know his work, the question of who he is himself is less relevant.