“People don’t realize that registered couples don’t have the same rights,” the filmmaker said in an interview with Seznam Zprávy. For several years, she charted the path of a law that would make a registered partnership a valid marriage. In the documentary Chalupová, she follows the activities of the We Are Fair movement, which seeks to promote marriage for all, but also opponents – the church, specific politicians or the Alliance for Family, which seeks to mention in the Czech constitution that “marriage is a union of a man and women”.
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The film is such a textbook of the legislative process in the Czech Republic, you follow not only the stories of people, but mainly the path of a specific law. When you started filming the Law of Love – did you expect it to be a time collection?
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She didn’t count. I thought it would be over in a year and a half — so the law will either be approved or not. In the end, it became a time-lapse that could be filmed. It brought us before deciding whether to continue after four years. Because the law was sent to the second reading, but this House will not have time to discuss it. It all falls under the table and the whole process has to start again. We knew that we had enough material and decided that we would not just map the discussion, but that we would become part of it.
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Barbora Chalupová
Twenty-eight-year-old Czech documentary filmmaker, screenwriter and director. She studied at FAMU and for the first time made the document more significant about herself Theory of equality, which deals with the position of women and men in the Czech Republic. She co-directed with Vít Klusák the most successful documentary in Czech history In the net about sexual predators in the online world. Her time-lapse documentary has just entered theaters The law of love, which maps the effort to legalize marriage for all.
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Documentary filmmaker Barbora Chalupová.
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With what intention do you want to participate in the discussion? It is quite obvious which “side” you are on. Is your goal to help the LGBT + community in the Czech Republic?
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Above all, inform the company. I think the biggest problem on this topic is lack of information. There is a lot of misinformation around, people have prejudices that we can refute with the film.
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Did you yourself have any prejudices that you refuted during the filming?
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I was an uninformed company in the beginning. Little did I know that there was a difference between a registered partnership and a marriage.
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This is probably the most common myth in general, then do people think there is nothing to fight for?
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Yes, it’s just a duel for the name. People do not realize that registered couples do not have the same rights, almost none. Although same-sex couples raise children, they do not have the same rights as spouses, and the child has no guarantees.
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Do you think that even politicians who fight against same-sex marriage are uninformed?
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Some politicians who fight the law are not homophobic, but want to keep their seats. They know that when they make a strong aggressive statement to the media, they get to the front of the media and make it popular.
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According to the data, however, the majority Czech society agrees to same-sex marriages. So where is the political struggle? Or is it really just attention?
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I think that politicians are more conservative than Czech society. The votes against are heard far more than the votes for.
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The description of the film states that the main role of your documentary is played by members of the Chamber of Deputies. I’m not sure I agree with that, it occurred to me that Czeslaw Walek from We Are Fair played a clear main role. I mention this because immediately after I received the invitation to the press screening of your film, I also received an e-mail from the other side, the Alliance for the Family, which complains that it appears in the documentary but has not been given such space as We Are Fair, that you did not communicate with them directly. What would you answer to them?
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People from the Alliance for the Family also handed out their alternative presskit before the press screening without seeing the film, which I found very daring. Now they have been invited to the premiere and given it out again as a symbol of the baby, because they say that marriage for all is equivalent to child trafficking. If they send it in some chain emails, it can affect some readers in this scattered time. They associate it with negative emotions, and because they are not interested in it, they accept the equation.
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We filmed with the Alliance for the Family just as we were fair. We filmed their public appearances, events, demonstrations. Why I decided not to give the space fifty percent was at a time when Jana Jochová began to appear controversially in the media and her views were extremist and homophobic. I knew that even opponents of the law would not identify with them, so in the film there are opponents not only from the Alliance for the Family, but also from the church, the political scene or the citizens themselves. I stratified the opposition among more characters and I’m happy for that.
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Where do you see the biggest obstacle to why the law has not yet been approved?
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Because Members do not work. Our House has the first place in this case in pending laws for this period. Of course he was covid. But they discussed this law together for fifteen hours, so I think they really discussed it. In addition, it has been lying there for them since 2018, so we really can’t blame it on a pandemic. And yes, if MP Vondráček tells the people of We are fair that “perhaps the law matures like wine”, it is, of course, tragicomic.
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We met with different aggressive views, I expected it all. But the biggest frustration stemmed from the legislative process. That MPs ignore the law. Now they deliberately voted to extend the committees so that they would no longer have to deal with it, and it fell to the next House. They will not decide. But they are here to make decisions!
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Although I followed the debate in the House quite a bit, in the document it was a force in such a concentrated form. Honestly, I was sick of some of the speeches. Did you have it that way? Have you ever felt frustrated with our society?
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I probably had it the most when I stood on the balcony and watched the proceedings in the House. The rhetoric is incredible. When we sent the film to foreign festivals or distributions, they told us – Yes, it is your local film, each country has its “law of love”, the debates looked the same everywhere, but what surprised us the most was how your deputies in the Chamber of Deputies say is truly unseen. What a dictionary they use and it’s actually okay.
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I think that even the viewer, who is not interested in marriage at all, or in general, will be interested in the course of the legislative process, he can put any, for example, more personal topic into it. He feels the same frustration. I wondered if I should have enough energy to push something here. Anything.
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At the end of the document, the sentence “So that we do not end up as in Poland and Hungary” will be heard. You have been focusing on the LGBT + community for several years, do you feel that we are moving closer to or away from Poland and Hungary? Where do we stand?
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As a society, we are more tolerant in this regard. We are a little more informed, we know what that actually means. Rather, our political representation does not know how to decide. It is not a resolute no, as in Poland or Hungary. There they also have a sentence in the constitution that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. For families and gay couples, an incredible journey will make a difference. The problem with us is that they don’t know. They just don’t know. We don’t know if it belongs to the east or the west. We don’t know if we only want money from the West and not rights.
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Barbora Chalupová in an interview for List News.
Do you think that the comparative argument can be in the power of the church? That he does not have such a position in our country as in Poland?
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Definitely yes. The Church also supports the Alliance for the Family. However, because it is not as represented here as in Poland, it does not have such strength. But it should be noted that in Ireland or Spain, in very Catholic countries, they passed this law.
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Do you reap “hey” for your documentary production?
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And what do they look like? What is your overall overall response to the document? The film has only been in distribution since Thursday, but you have presented it at festivals. Although I understand that a specific group of people will visit again…
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But even there, there were many people who opposed the law. And what do hells look like? Since I’m not on social networks, it’s hard to write anything on my profile. I’m receiving emails. There are also indiscriminate comments below the interviews.
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I don’t read. I only read reviews that can be constructive criticism.
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Do you perceive a greater influx of attention on this topic?
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On this topic, the audience will react in the same way as the participants in the debate, they will be divided into two camps. And just because I mapped the legislative path of a law that promotes marriage for all and not the opposition, which doesn’t interest me so much, because we have marriage for men and women, people will consider me bad without even seeing the film. People still perceive the documentary as an objective journalism, where people talk to the camera. Nobody talks to the camera in my documentary, I use the observational method. I stand behind the camera for hours and watch and do not interfere in any way.
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Why did you choose this method?
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It was more important for me to have the scenes alive and authentic. Thanks to that, the film has its comedic potential. We noticed what would not have happened in the interview. They wouldn’t have such a charge if I didn’t move like a shadow.
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What do you say when people describe you as an activist? I assume it’s happening.
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In that case, they didn’t see my movies. It is very easy to summarize me in one word, which does not have a very positive charge in our country. I am a filmmaker and I think that I managed to deal with the topic from above. Thanks to the fact that this topic does not concern me personally.
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Finally, I would like to return to your collaboration with documentary filmmaker Vít Klusák, with whom you made the successful documentary In the Network. I have seen many times before that people call his films “trotting”, ie they describe his style, sometimes perhaps too overly influenced, even arranged. How did you cooperate?
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We both try to make documentaries “on film” that we are very interested in their form. As for the approach, we do not have much in common there. Vít intervenes in situations and directs himself in films. I performed on the network, but it was really a different format. I felt it was the best way. If you’re doing a psychosocial experiment, you want to show the viewer the cards, including our disagreements. Otherwise, the observational method is closer to me, where I let the protagonists speak and I obviously do not put my opinion into it.
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