"What is important? I would say not to be afraid, to be honest with yourself and with others. Sometimes, unexpected honesty seemed to work, even in dangerous situations. That it's better in the end, to tell the truth and to take things a little bit as an adventure that you can get sucked into, when you're pursuing, I would say, something of value. That it's just much more interesting not to operate pragmatically, sort of with well-calculated procedures and strategies, but that in the end, sometimes it's much more worthwhile to take things as an adventure game and get sucked into it. And to accept things that look like losing. Losing is usually much more rewarding and much more fun than winning. No one really knows what the best direction to go is. Sometimes, it's much better to just let life take its course and be firm in values, in attitudes. And it is always worth following interesting and open-minded people."
"Well, it's pretty grotesque. I borrowed Vondráček's Introduction to Psychiatry from somewhere. I figured I should get a handle on the diagnoses. I thought I was going to have depressive feelings for sure, I didn't want to go to the military at all, so I thought, I'll have to colour it in later, just to know what those diagnoses look like. I did a little studying. The problem was that when I joined the military, I found that I was experiencing rather euphoria, and I found it rather fun. Visually poetic. The autumn mists, and all those young men in uniform. So I rather perceived it as being sensually very charming. I didn't understand why they were shouting at us. Because I was willing to go out of my way to accommodate everybody. I had been trained by my family. Finding a firm order within myself was my task during my studies. So it seemed to me that they didn't have to shout because I was happy to get on with everybody. Well, then it turned out that I got my high school diploma and that I was an artist, and the pull started, and I didn't have a standard military experience after that admission."
"It was a completely different spirit, I suddenly felt, I don't know how to say it, completely shifted, like the heavens had opened up in front of me. There were a lot of interesting, smart classmates. Different ones. My colleague Ivan Emr, who was interested in contemporary music, introduced us to rock music. So we listened to Frank Zappa and Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple and that kind of music in the first year. Another thing, Ivoš Sedláček - because of his brother and other connections to the groups - knew a lot of what was going on in contemporary art. I had the great advantage that through my Professor Zhoř, I was invited to the circle of amateur artists in Blansko, where Professor Igor Zhoř was invited and hired as a lecturer. He was fired from the Faculty of Education after the questioning in '71, and this became his semi-official job. The state was supporting culture and devoting itself to amateur artists; there could be nothing wrong with that, so he helped organise, let's say, three-day weekend meetings. I was in Herálec, but there were also meetings in Rudka and other places. And there, for example, Jiří Valoch came to give a lecture. Thanks to Valoch, we knew about contemporary art. He used to show us things about the minimal, about the concept. So we amateur artists- I knew at the age of fifteen what the graduates at the Art School didn't know. So we would get together and pass on our findings, and what interesting things were going on."
Blahoslav Rozbořil was born in Rychnov nad Kněžnou on 15 August 1959 as the third son of the evangelical pastor Miroslav Rozbořil. His mother worked as a clerk and stayed at home after the birth of her first son. The family lived in Kostelec nad Orlicí, where he attended primary school. His two younger sisters were also born there. He finished primary school in Boskovice, where the family moved in 1969. He spent his free time creating art, reading intensively and studying languages. He deepened his artistic interest in the folk art school and longed to study at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno. He passed the entrance examination but was not accepted. He began an apprenticeship in bookbinding at the Brno Paper Mills. He participated in exhibitions of amateur artists. He tried to apply to SUPŠ in Brno two more times, and was admitted in 1976. He did not finish his apprenticeship in bookbinding. He studied book and promotional graphics under Professor Dalibor Chatrný. He made many friendships at the school. He collaborated with Josef Daňek, Ivo Sedláček and other classmates on the production of samizdat, which they printed on Xerox machines. Together they participated in many independent exhibitions, art happenings and home seminars. After graduation, he tried to get into the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, but was not admitted. He also failed in Aesthetics at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague. During military service, he applied to the Faculty of Education at UJEP in Brno and in 1983 to the Faculty of Philosophy‘s Science of Fine Arts. He was not admitted to either of them. In 1983, he started teaching at the LŠU in Slavkov. The changes after November 1989 gave the witness hope that he could still realise his desire for further education. He got a job as a security guard at the Railway Construction Company and was accepted to study Sociology and Work Sociology full-time at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University. At the time of the filming, in May 2025, he was a lecturer at the Department of Art Education at the Faculty of Education at MUNI and was living and creating in Brno.
