“She arrived on a cloud, sang songs about love, and was a beautiful sex bomb. I served at the airport in Bechyn and I can tell you that there was practically no locker in which Iveta Bartošová’s poster was not pasted. We all ate it. As a woman, as a singer,” a JS fan aptly described Iveta
As early as this Sunday, viewers can remember Iveta Bartošová through a documentary that, according to many critics and viewers who watched it on Voyo, is much more engaging than the animated miniseries.
Document You know little of me will focus in three episodes on the journey of a confident, talented and initially inexperienced girl from Frenštát pod Radhoštěm to the big world, on the era under the artistic direction of Ladislav Štaidl and on the period when Iveta Bartošová gradually breaks free from his influence, rises to the top of her career and establishes herself in one of the most successful musical performances in our history. The documentary also uncovers the reasons for Iveta’s subsequent withdrawal from public life and the circumstances of the end of her life.
I believe that we find the most fundamental difference in the fact that Iveta Bartošová’s story used to be told by tabloids, but mainly by men. We, on the other hand, retell it mainly of middle class women or people who have no reason to parasitize on her tragedy,
The director Tomáš Klein explains:
We are therefore interested in the view of Michal Penek, who joined the show business machinery together with Iveta and experienced its dark side, including falling to the very bottom. Or Tereza Pergnerová, who went through an extremely difficult life path. These are people who can take a critical look at the pitfalls of show business and at the same time both have a strong relationship with Iveta.
If you feel that there has been too much of “the Bartos” in the media space in recent weeks, it might be worth reading conversation with producer Maja Hamplová.
Six years with Iveta
I lived with Iveta for six years. And the last three were much more intense than I could have imagined at the beginning.
When you live “close” with someone like this and almost every day, you form a special relationship with them. I have developed an understanding of Iveta. I myself sometimes, being swept away by the world of audiovisual creation, over time felt a deeper and deeper empathy for what happened to Iveta Bartošová, and for how it all turned out.
Singing, film or any kind of creation is merciless. Long-term work is often assessed at the end with a simple YES – accepted, or a strict NO – not accepted. We have to face the fact that our work and its success depend primarily on the opinion of others.
In retrospect, I understand quite well why things happened the way they did. Iveta Bartošová was alone. Or no, maybe she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by a lot of people who meant her more or less well, and it is certainly not debatable that there were also a lot of people who liked her. But in a state of deep sadness, depression, anxiety, I understand that she did not see them around. And so I find within myself compassion and love for someone I’ve never met. I wish that somewhere beneath what we know from the media, the viewer could feel that asking for help is not a weakness. That he doesn’t have to be alone in the difficulties of his life.
During the time when we were working on the series Iveta and You Know Me Little, I encountered a lot of condemnation. Are you seriously making a series about Iveta Bartošová, and a documentary? Why?
That answer is now much easier at the end than it was at the beginning. Because people who have experienced deep failure, self-doubt, fear and loneliness need to be heard. For all of us who played her music, and for those of us who laughed as she neared the end, it’s good to see that there is one being underneath it all. A woman, a mother, a little girl who could no longer find a way out. And we should know it, look into it and face what we are complicit in. Iveta was supposed to get her voice, which she didn’t get in her lifetime.
It is evening as I write this. The editing of the third part of the third series of Ivety is approved and the final version of the documentary series Maló mě znaše is submitted to Nova. I feel sadness and a little relief. Sadness, as if I had to say goodbye to someone I loved. And I am relieved that I will finally close the chapter of my life called Iveta.
With respect for her, with dignity, with love for all of us and for those who had to stay here without her.
