Pensioners 1965

Directed by Angelika Hanauerová

A socially critical documentary based on the contrast between the images and testimonies of pension applicants – destitute and lost in the corridors of the Social Security Institute – and the mechanical detachment of the administrative procedures that determine their fates. In this context, the final statement by a pensioner at the counter strikes an ironic note: “I’m completely satisfied with everything.” Some shots make intertextual references to progressive works from the preceding period with Kafkaesque undertones – the journey along the ceiling of the factory in Schorm’s Courage for Every Day (1964) or the ride in the filing lift in Juráček’s A Character in Need of Support (1963). The work is a documentary exercise by second-year students of the Department of Documentary Film.