Once I Got in, It Was Hard to Get Out (2024)

Overview

Ida is cleaning out the house that her grandfather, an artist, used to live in. She wades through a studio overflowing with artefacts, oddities and lost history. Similarly to S P A C E S, Štrbová treats the theme of memory and loss, combining fiction and documentary, letting the images of nostalgic childhood and the suffocating past flow associatively. To the sound of Francesco Geminiani's Concerto grosso no. 12, subtitled Madness, the fragile physicality of both dead and living relics stands out. The head of a dead parrot, a cast of her grandmother's breasts or a moss-covered real estate agent represent the discoveries of a personal archaeological site and exhibits of an introspective museum of family history.