Sometimes I see a strange woman there instead of me, says Bára Basiková after 28 years of filming – News List

Documentary filmmaker Helena Třeštíková is finishing her next time-lapse film. Since 1996, she has also captured many amazing situations in the life of the popular singer on camera. Bára Basiková says: “Sometimes today I see a strange woman there instead.”

“There is unquestionable truth, power and authenticity in that document,” describes Bára Basiková in an interview that is part of the Seznam Zpráv project A gallery of personalities. “Helena and I eventually became friends. When I decided we were going to shoot everything, I had to understand that it wasn’t just going to be nice things.”

The film, which should be released in cinemas in the spring of 2025, shows, among other things, the period of the collapse of the singer’s three marriages, career failures and problems Cheers. “It’s about mistakes, mistakes, life … What kind of mother I am, what I’m like in civilian life, in private. In the context of the film, it has a different meaning than when someone takes out some information and puts it in the tabloids. That film is real and thanks to it I can show how it really is,” explained Bára Basiková, why she kept the film camera close to her body for such a long time.

The first stage of filming Helena Třeštíková began in 1996, when the singer had twin four-year-old daughters and her husband at the time was with them on parental leave. “I was working, earning and supporting my family. Helena thought it was an interesting topic and we started filming,” recalls Bára Basiková.

Now, when she sometimes comes to the editing room before finishing the film, she is often worried: “Many things have slipped out of my memory, I have forgotten them. And suddenly I see a strange woman saying some things that are no longer true. Or it ended completely differently. There is a lot of good, but also bad. It is a completely fixed mirror. It’s the hard way, the way you live.”

The last film of Bár Basiková with Helena Třeštíková was completed this year, the film also describes the time when the singer and her third husband were expecting the birth of their son, who is now fifteen years old.

In the interview, Bára Basiková emphasizes the importance of a good relationship with children in her life. “Somewhere God will add to you, somewhere he will take away. I lived part of my life, I remember the good things, and life goes on. But the children, that is forever. I didn’t have an entirely idyllic childhood myself, I had a very unhappy relationship with my mother. That’s why I make up for it and think that my children are happy with me as a mother. I don’t think so, I know. They even tell me that sometimes.”

Bára Basiková loved to sing from a young age, television cameras even recorded her singing the song Markétka in the program Zpívá zela rodiná when she was twelve years old (in 1975). But her mother did not understand this hobby – she called it cackling and made Bara study a “normal” profession. After graduating from a high school of economics, she became a housekeeper at a folk art school…

Her star career began. He still sings hits like Soumérná or Soumrak boho. Her role as Mary Magdalene in the cult musical Jesus Christ Superstar also became famous.

Many awards and recognitions she has collected over the years, including top places in the Golden Nightingale poll or in the Anděl music awards, but one day she took and took to the street there the Prague’s Karlín to the garbage cans. “It was in the spring of 2012 when I moved from a six-room apartment to a small one. So everything had to be greatly reduced,” said Bára Basiková today. “There was no resentment on my part, just a clean up. I don’t want to be ungrateful, for me the award is mostly a pleasure, I appreciate the fact that someone expressed some opinion or praise about me, but it doesn’t change anything about the work i have If I don’t get the award, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing anyway.”

Bára Basiková describes herself as a “totally unconventional singer”, and that’s because she sings something different from time to time. She sometimes mixes rock with musicals, at one point even singing Gregorian in a modern version, recently she sang an album with the metal band Pačes for a change, now she lets her – out an album of Christmas songs…

And when he can’t sing – like during the covid pandemic – he’s going to do a completely different job. “Bills needed to be paid. I’m just the type of person who doesn’t save much, and when I earn money, I like to spend it, because I think life is meant to be lived… So first I helped in a home for the elderly, and then in a children’s home,” she says and explains in the interview, what those experiences gave her.

At that time, she also returned to writing, which she enjoyed as a high school student. She followed up her novel Conversations with Escape, published in 1990, in 2021 with a book of diary entries from the covid era, When You Jump, Me Too.

“In the first days of covid, I walked around holding my head in my hands, what will happen to us, what will we do… My daughters told me: ‘Mom, sit down and drink. You’ve always written and never had time, so this is the perfect opportunity.'”

How does she remember the time she started singing professionally and why did she need to know who is the president of Mongolia? What did the end of the communist system mean for her career? What role did Bohumil Hrabal play in her life? And why does he feel that singers in their private lives attract “scumbags”?

You can listen to the interview with Bára Basiková in the audio version at the beginning of the article – we will publish the transcript and video of the entire interview on Saturday.