Two nights before the festival we finally had a "presentable" version of the film, but it was far from finished. There was still a significant amount of off-line and on-line editing to do, we hadn’t even begun the color-correction process, and the sound mix was far from complete. But we felt that we were at least ready enough to get a useful first impression from an objective festival audience.
We were certainly skeptical about winning anything, since we learned that Švankmajer’s LUNACY would also be in competition. He hardly ever enters his films into competitions and we were surprised that he made an exception with this one. Švankmajer is our all-time favorite filmmaker whose works still represent an insurmountable standard for us and we didn’t even dream about winning a competition against him.
Nevertheless, we were excited about the festival since this was our chance to get some feedback from objective viewers before entering the final stages of post-production. We weren't really interested in hearing exactly where and when the audience laughed, cried, etc. as much as to see how they perceived the film as a whole. Would they see it as a spoof of the Gay-rights movement which has recently been getting a lot of attention in the Czech Republic? Would they see it as one long perverse joke? Would they see it as a one-sided attack on religion? These were the questions that most interested us.
The first screening went off without a hitch and most of the viewers stayed for a long discussion after the film - the longest post-screening discussion at the festival. People of both sexes and all ages asked all sorts of questions and expressed a fascinating array of opinions. We finally felt confident that we had achieved our main goals and created a work which inspires fresh and respectable debate - quite a rarity these days. All we had to do now was polish things up a bit...
