Lety (2009) Video 19:40 (still)
Lety (2009) Video 19:40 (still)
Lety (2009) Video 19:40 (still)
Lety #1 (2009) Photography cm 150×100
Lety #2 (2009) Photography cm 100×150
Lety #3 (2009) Photography, cm 100×210
Lety #4 (2009) Photography, cm 100×210
Lety (2009) Text, Songs
Jesi, Lety, video screening, Civic Art Gallery, December 2014
Bucharest, Lety, Alert Studio, May 2014
Bucharest, Lety, Alert Studio, May 2014
Pesaro, Move in video, curated by Stefano Verri, 2nd xxxFuorifestival, Ex Chiesa della Maddalena, June 2013
London, Roma-Sinti-Kale-Manush, curated by Gabi Scardi, Mark Sealy and Christine Eyene, Autograph ABP, May 2012 (Photo by Sıtkı Kösemen)
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Ancona, Lety, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Videodromo, Atelier dell’Arco Amoroso, December 2011
Berlin, Lety, Un-wetter Discursive Picnic, Infernoesque – Die Lustige Grube, September 2013
Sol’ (Slovakia), May 2009
Sol’ (Slovakia), May 2009
Sol’ (Slovakia), May 2009
Sol’ (Slovakia), May 2009
Road trip, May 2009
Orlík nad Vltavou (Czech Rep.), May 2009
Lety (Czech Rep.), May 2009
Lety (Czech Rep.), May 2009
Lety (Czech Rep.), May 2009
Lety records a trip which took place in May 2009 involving two Slovak Romany singers, František Ďuďa and Martina Ďuďová (the Ďuďovci), who visited a commemoration for the victims of the concentration camp at Lety, in the Czech Republic.
I first saw and heard the Ďuďovci during my artist-in-residency in Stanica/Truc Spherique in Žilina, Slovakia. The cultural center was hosting a concert with several Romany groups. František (Ferko) Ďuďa and Martina (Martinka) Ďuďová came on stage in their wheelchairs, and as soon as they started singing, they turned them into percussion instruments. Ferko also turned out to be a beatbox virtuoso. I was won over by their music and the way they sang together.
The director of the center, Marek Adamov, had told me about a Romany settlement not far from Žilina, and how precarious and difficult life was there. Searching for news about this, I came across the story of Lety, a village in the Czech Republic, as well as the concentration camp of the same name, now gone. During the Nazi occupation, Lety was the prison for 1,309 Romanies, most of whom were later transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Since the 1970’s, the site of the Lety camp has been used as an industrial pig farm. For this reason, the commemoration is held in a nearby woodland clearing.
It was hard to find a place of memory that was more mistreated than Lety, as if the discrimination of the Romanies had to be reflected in the memory of their holocaust. So, I wanted to combine the harmony of Ferko and Martinka’s voices, their extraordinarily different abilities, with Lety’s terrible mistreatment. The rest was an adventure, made possible by the generosity and friendship of various people, but especially Jana Ondiková.
© Cristiano Berti
2024
The astonished observation of memory and the traces that generated it coming undone, the labyrinth-like relationship between personal experience and the more vast space of history, are all features that emerge in a circular fashion in Berti’s works, in a logic of recursive astonishment, organised in successive concentric circles.
In Lety (2009) Berti explores this complex circularity through a work that is cross between a video, a documentary and reportage. A film-based object of a hybrid nature, Lety is the story of journey, the result of the artist’s time spent in Slovakia during which he came into contact with two musicians, František Ďuďa and Martina Ďuďová, from the Roma community settled in the eastern region of the country. The film developed from Berti’s proposal to accompany them on a long car trip to the border between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Ferko and Martinka are both blind and suffer from numerous ailments that confine them to wheelchairs and they only speak in Slovak and Romani. These factual details are the ingredients for the action triggered by Berti who puts himself in the position of participating observer of the scene inside the vehicle, without being able to interact verbally with Ferko and Martinka due to the lack of a shared language, but only film them, leaving space to their songs and their spontaneous accounts about themselves, as the forests roll past in the background.
Singing is the central element, as Ferko and Martinka have developed such a particular talent as singers and musicians over the years that they perform on various occasions as a two-member choir, performing songs of their traditional Roma repertoire along with others that they have composed themselves. The time of the trip does not take on the classic frontal style of a documentary, rather it becomes a moving itinerary of listening and expression, where Ferko and Martinka talk about
themselves, about their physical limitations, music and intimate experiences. Berti does not appear at any point in the film, providing the sense of marvel of having met these two musicians and the circumstance of the trip with them indirectly, through his invisibility.
As with classic road-movies the film takes the spectator step by step through the gradual unveiling of the personality of the protagonists, of their life stories, and the final sense of the whole trip. They reach their destination past the Slovakian border, in time to participate in an annual commemoration ceremony at Lety, a town in the Czech Republic that hosted a concentration camp during the forties where 1309 Romani were interned. 326 of them died during their imprisonment, while many others saw the end of their days in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland. Ferko and Martinka participate in the ceremony along with other Romani as a tribute to the memory of relatives and ancestors who were exterminated in that circumstance. Lety conserves no traces of those events, and the site of the camp itself is now the headquarters of an industrial pig farm.
The length of the trip and the film, the serious physical disabilities of the protagonists, the memories of the ghosts of the Romani holocaust that hover in the forest-laden scenery of Eastern-Europe and the contrast between past and present, make Lety a multi-faceted documentary. In the words of the artist himself, it is a device rather than a documentary, a crossroads of stories and paradoxes that make the spectator face a series of radical questions on Europe and its identity destined to last like a long echo over time.
© Luigi Fassi
excerpt from «The Vertigo of Reality », in Cristiano Berti. Vertigine del Reale/Vertigo of Reality, exhibition catalogue, Turin: Allemandi (ISBN 978-88-422-2104-3), 2012, p. 155
This work comprises one video, four photographs, ten songs and two written texts.
The central part of Lety is the video of the journey from the Slovak village of Sol’ to the village of Lety in the Czech Republic. In the conversation held during this trip, the Ďuďovci give an intimate and absorbing description of their daily lives. They explain their vision of the world, and recount their own reminiscences as well as stories told by their grandfather, who was interned in a labour camp during World War II. These accounts are interspersed with songs from the Romany tradition or composed by them.
The two texts are a short descriptive text and the transcription of the conversation between Jana Ondiková, František Ďuďa and Martina Ďuďová, registered on May 12 during the trip.
Lety (2009): One video, four photographs, ten songs and two written texts
Video, 19:40
Lambda print, cm 150×100 (Lety #1); cm 100×150 (Lety #2); cm 100×210 (Lety #3 and Lety #4). Edition of 5 + 1 PA
Photographs by Piero Ottaviano
Video credits:
With František Ďuďa and Martina Ďuďová
Camera by Cristiano Berti and Jana Ondiková
Sound by Sonia Portoghese
Editing by Antonio Lucarini
Acknowledgements:
Výbor pro Odškodnění Romského Holocaustu [Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust], Prague, Czech Republic
The conversation registered on May 12, 2009, was transcribed and translated in English by Jana Ondiková. Monica Glebocki then edited the English text.
The Sompan Foundation, Hampton Hill, United Kingdom, and Ideadonna Onlus, Turin, Italy
Joj, mamo, miri mamo [Oh, Mum, My Mum]
Amari partija [With Our Gang]
Slzy ja v očiach mám [I Have Tears in My Eyes]
Bari brana phundraven [The Big Gate Is Open]
Sulachardžom la romňake [I Swore to My Wife]
Cindžom pochtanoro [I Bought Some Linen]
Devla tu, sascardžal man [God, You Healed Me]
Sar odi rači avela [When the Night Comes]
Adadžives o bijav amaro Ernis kerel [Today Our Erni Is Getting Married]
Džav pal tute, džav [I Follow You, Follow You]
2014
Lety, parallel event of the 6th Bucharest Biennale, Alert Studio, Bucharest, Romania
2012
Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, with a text by Luigi Fassi, Mole Vanvitelliana, Ancona, Italy
2011
Lety, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Videodromo, Atelier dell’Arco Amoroso, Ancona, Italy
2013
A Virtual Memorial: Shoah Film Collection, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, Jewish Cultural Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
Move in video, curated by Stefano Verri, 2nd xxxFuorifestival, Ex Chiesa della Maddalena, Pesaro, Italy
2012
A Virtual Memorial: Shoah Film Collection, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, Noass Art Gallery, Riga, Lietuva
Roma-Sinti-Kale-Manush, curated by Gabi Scardi, Mark Sealy and Christine Eyene, Autograph ABP, London, United Kingdom
2016
Tre video, video screening (January 21), Gratis Club, Senigallia, Italy
2014
Lety, video screening (December 12), Civic Art Gallery, Jesi, Italy
Lety, video screening (January 25 – 27) in A Virtual Memorial Milan 2014, I Colori Della Memoria, [Box] Gallery – Visual Container, Milan, Italy
2013
Lety, video screening (November 14) in De l’amour et d’autres histoires (en Slovaquie): Milena Bochet, Daniela Rusnoková, Cristiano Berti, 15th Festival du Cinéma Documentaire Filmer à tout prix, Cinematek, Brussels, Belgium
Lety, video screening (October 25 – 31) in A Virtual Memorial Warsaw 2013, Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland
Lety, video screening (September 15), Un-wetter Discursive Picnic, Infernoesque – Die Lustige Grube, Berlin, Germany
2011
Lety, online video screening, in Romamediaarchive.net [Roma Media Archive] – extinct website
2010
Lety, online video screening, in Sfc.engad.org [Shoah Film Collection] – extinct website
2014
Lety, artist talk (December 12), Civic Art Gallery, Jesi, Italy
2013
Lety, artist talk (September 23), in A Virtual Memorial Vilnius 2013 Symposium, Jewish Cultural Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
Lety, artist talk (September 15), in Un-wetter Discursive Picnic, Infernoesque – Die Lustige Grube, Berlin, Germany
2012
Lety, artist talk (June 2), in A Virtual Memorial Riga 2012 – Commemorative Interventions, Noass Art Gallery, Riga, Lietuva
2011
Roma Media Archive Launch, talk and screening (June 3) with Nigel Dickinson, Tina Carr and Annemarie Schoene, in Call the Witness – Roma Pavilion, collateral event of the 54th Biennial of Venice, Unesco Venice Office/Palazzo Zorzi, Venice, Italy
2017
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2011
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2010
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2009
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