66 Seasons

A documentary about a swimming pool in the city of Kosice, dubbed where 'history used to go to bathe'. Spanning 1936 to 2003, it intertwines pool anecdotes with 66 years of Central and Eastern Europe's history. Individual tales form a mosaic reconstructing history, emphasising that people's lives shape, not merely reflect, the historical backdrop.

'I did it at a particular moment when I had no chance of financing this movie. It was a complicated time in Slovakia. So instead of complaining, I just wrote down my ideal film. After all, if you can't make it, you write it…Later, the situation changed, but it still helped me a lot. What ended up in the finished film wasn't identical, I kept maybe 30%, but the ideas were nearly the same. People said different things and there were different situations, because reality surprises you all the time. But because I was so well prepared, I knew what I wanted to talk about - even despite its rather complicated structure. And also, because I wrote it all down, I was free to improvise. I had the film in my head already.' - Peter KEREKES