Interview with Ondřej Moravec

„Darkening”: giving depression a shape

I am telling about my own experiences. But there is a question: what's the purpose of the testimony? A lot of people are asking me if the main goal was to do it for some therapeutic reasons. I was answering that it was not the main goal, because I'm in the therapy for years already. My goal was to share the experience and show to the people, what this disease is about. But at the end of the day, even though that was not my intention, telling this story was some kind of a self-therapy for me. There were some aspects which I did not expect at the beginning, before I decided to tell the story: like the exposure. I hadn’t thought earlier that I would be exposing myself, telling intimate things in such a scale.

Izabella Adamczewska-Baranowska: Let me start provocatively. Depression is not a game, and „Darkening” is a kind of quest: you have to help protagonist to shoo away the monster. 

Ondřej Moravec: - Definitely, depression is not a game. But I think that “Darkening” is also not a game in a proper sense of what the game means. If you want to create a game, you need to set some rules, you need to collect important things to achieve goals which are quite clear. “Darkening” is not like that. There are some game elements, like using voice control to support the horse or shoo away the Deamon, but I think that that's the purpose of the immersive medium: it tries to get you a bit more into what's happening. Different authors use different methods. We decided to use voice control, because the voice therapy was for me - and still is – a very important part of how to deal with depression. So, I wanted to let the viewers taste how it is to use the voice and give them opportunity to see what is happening actually in them. 

I was thinking about “Darkening” as a therapeutic fairy tale. I don't know if you are familiar with the theory of Bruno Bettelheim. In 1976 he published a book “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales”, in which he propose the Freudian analysis of fairy tales. He agues, that fairy tales help children solve problems, for example with anxiety. What do you think about this comparison? Have you thought about “Darkening” as a therapeutic fairy tale?

- Not much.

But “Darkening” is without a doubt a kind of fairy tale. There is a forest with a monster. You are using motives known from fairy tales, such as journey of a hero.

- Yeah, definitely there is a bit fairy tale touch in “Darkening”, but although I love fairy tales and I still read them, I would not call it like that. It’s just some of the important things in my life were happening in the forest, and then I put there some imaginative things which are close to me. But they are more like a showing the inner world of me basically. 

Some people were saying that “Darkening” was too mellow, apart from what depression is. Our goal was not to scare people, but somehow bring the idea of depression closer to their minds. So, I think that it can be a story with some fairy tale elements.

I think about what you told me about Bruno Bettelheim – maybe it’s about all the stories you know, not only fairy tales. We are telling stories to help us to cope with the things which are happening in our life. 

“Darkening” is also as a kind of visual memoir, in which you invite others.

- When I think about memoirs, I imagine something very detailed, maybe a story about entire life of a person. “Darkening” is not like this. 

Although memoir is a kind of autobiography, it doesn't have to be the account of whole your life. There are some memoirs of people who dealt with depression. Didn’t you call “Darkening” the memoir?

- No, I'm not familiar with this term. 

But it is a kind of testimony. 

- Yes. I am telling about my own experiences. But there is a question: what's the purpose of the testimony? A lot of people are asking me if the main goal was to do it for some therapeutic reasons. I was answering that it was not the main goal, because I'm in the therapy for years already. My goal was to share the experience and show to the people, what this disease is about. But at the end of the day, even though that was not my intention, telling this story was some kind of a self-therapy for me. There were some aspects which I did not expect at the beginning, before I decided to tell the story: like the exposure. I hadn’t thought earlier that I would be exposing myself, telling intimate things in such a scale. So in one moment I became scared from all of it. As many people are afraid to share their personal mental health struggles, because they are afraid that the society will reject them.  But at then end there was a  nice discovery: finding out, that it did not happen. On the contrary: it created some kind of the protective membrane, which helped  me to accept the disease even more than before.

To whom you address “Darkening”: those, who deal with depression, to help them to cope with it, or those, who doesn’t know about this state of mind much?

- It’s both  People with depression were not our first row or audience, because we were a bit afraid of their feelings. Wouldn’t this experience be too much for them? But then we found out that a lot of people with depression saw it, and they were really thankful for that. The main effect of “Darkening” was the feeling “I'm not alone in this”. Seeing a story which can resonate in me, while I'm having the similar problems, can be very empowering. Now we are even offering “Darkening” to a main psychiatric hospital in Prague… They have a kind of a game center, where our VR experience will be offered to the patients as well. 

But at the beginning the idea was to show what the person with depression feel to the people who are not that familiar with this kind of mental problem.

I’ve recently read “Giving Up the Ghost”, a memoir of a writer Hilary Mantel. It’s an account of her child- and youthhood in the shade of endometriosis and several problems. “By the time I was 24 I had learned the hard way that whatever my mental distress – and it does distress one, to be ignored, invalidated, and humiliated – I must never, ever go near a psychiatrist or take a psychotropic drug” – she wrote. She had a misfortune, because her psychiatrist, “Dr G.”, was not a good specialist. He diagnosed her problems as “stress, caused by overambition”. As she writes, “This was a female complain, one which people believed in, in those years, just as the Greeks believed that women were made ill by their wombs cutting loose and wandering about their bodies”. 

- That’s sad that she had such an experience. It’s very fragile of course and if you find not sensitive doctor, it’s a disaster. Luckily, I have always been seeing good specialists. So in my case, I  didn't want to show the alternative to psychiatric care  and medicines. A voice therapy always meant to be show as something which can help you as a addition, a support for the main treatment. I'm saying everywhere that the medicine saved me in many ways. So, I'm not trying to show the alternative for the system, which I think works mostly good. But I know few people who met bad specialists and it blocked them in many ways.     

In some interview you said: „In the beginning, I didn’t have the ambition to tell it as my own story. I envisioned choosing various protagonists, conducting interviews with them, and carrying the project forwards in that general direction. But emotionally and as a filmmaker, it would have been difficult for me. Given the sensitivity of the topic, I would have felt scared about misrepresenting what’s going on in someone’s head. The safest way was for me to tell my story, which also allowed me to monitor what would be shared”.

- I had an idea that I will take a story of some different person and go through it. It would look more or less similar as it is in “Darkening”, but that would be the story of somebody else. But the main reason why I decided not to take it was that I was doing the voice therapy and it was for me very important to include it into the story. I wanted to use it in the experience, and I haven't found anybody suitable for whom voice therapy was also that important. I didn’t want to fake someone’s else experience, because every story is very intimate and subjective. This is why I decided to tell my own story. 

Do you think it is possible to show exactly how it is to be somebody else?

- I think it can be done, in this case I was just not feeling it. I decided that it will be easier for me. I also could take all the responsibility for it. 

In “Darkening”, as in most memoirs, and adult is talking with his younger self. 

- Yes, it’s that kind of a dialogue, although a lot of things are still the same. Usually when you are having a talk with your younger self, you are having the different position. You are looking back. Here it’s a half way - in something I am looking back at how the disease started, in something I am still observing what the disease is doing.     

Agnieszka Przybyszewska is using a term “sylleptic protagonist”: “you” are you, but you also aren’t “you”. In “Darkening” “you” is Ondra the child but also a person, who experiences this work. There is a very nice scene in “Darkening”: you have to look into the mirror. You see a protagonist in the mirror, but then you have to gaze at your hands. The hands are yours. So it’s semi-embodiment, semi-immersion. 

- It was my intention. In most of my works I'm playing with this perspective. During “Darkening” process some people from our team were like “you know, the perspective is not that clear who you are actually” – and they might have seen it as a bit problematic, but for me it was nice. It's a melting: you are in somebody’s else shoes, you are in somebody's else story, but you are also a bit in story on your own. I like it, but it's also tricky. For example the scene with the TV or the mirror: you see different person, then you can move and see, that it's mirroring your movements. So, there's a thin line between keeping this energy, that you are living someone else's story, and feeling, that’s still your story in a way. And of course the narrative, the voiceover, and everything… So, there are more aspects which can for some people be confusing in a way. It's subjective, but any viewer told me that it was confusing for him or her. 

“Darkening” is also a story of your coming out. When the viewer is in your teenage room and looks around, he sees movie posters: “Brokeback Mountain” of Ang Lee and “A Jihad For Love” of Parvez Sharma, documentary film on Islam and LGBT life.

- The cinema is the important part during the coming out, to somehow accept yourself a bit more. Few days ago I was talking to my grandma, about what could be the root of my depression. She thinks that it was connected with coming out a lot. She was always very accepting, surprisingly a bit as she is from an older generation who might have had a problem with it, so she thought about this. 

Coming out thing was definitely very sensitive, especially at high school, where, you know, you are putting yourself together as a person and you are building your system. So, it was very fragile because some schoolmates were making fun of me, and it was not always very nice. From a distance, I can say that it definitely had an important effect on my self-consciousness. So it was a very important part of it, but I was always thinking about it as only one element of the overall problem     .

In this scene in my child room I am quite laconic. I am not saying much about the roots of the problems. I’m mentioning the coming out, but also the family problems and, first of all, I was always putting more significance on the family problems there.

Yes, there is an argue between your parents. 

- It's funny that a lot of people think that it's between the parents. It doesn't matter much, but it was supposed to be between my father and brother. My brother had – and still have – some mental health problems as well. My parents had a lot of troubles with it, so they were focusing on him a lot. Coping with the family situation was for me more troublesome and important than coming out, I guess. But who knows? Even after 17 years of therapy it's still a mystery to find out the actual root and work somehow against it to make it weaker. 

In one interview you called ”Darkening” an animated documentary. Can the animation be a kind of document? How much of your life is visualized in “Darkening”? There are a lot of metaphors in it: collapsing houses, red scarf, monster.

- When you speak about animated documentary as a genre, it's very unclear: if something is animated or drawn, it's created. But then we can ask ourselves: what is ‘documentary’ actually? It never can be 100% objective view on the things which happened, even if you are using the actual footprints you know from video. Animated documentary genre is more like trying to give you the essence of what was important in the story and show it creatively. For me what's important documentary aspect in “Darkening” is my voice. It's actually me telling the story.

We were thinking about hiring a professional actor who will do that, but I decided that I want to have this footprint in the voice.

In “Darkening” there are a lot of things which are recreated. We go step by step, so I think that the overall village is very metaphorical. Only one of the houses actually looks like my family house. When the village is  bright by the end, it's somehow close to me in a way that I feel comfortable there, so it was more connected with some theories of a safe space. There are therapeutic aspects or exercises in which you are finding your safe space in your mind, and that you can relax. So, that was done like that.

We tried to recreate my child room as it looked at my parents' house. You can see that there is a weird TV painted. That was my real TV which I had there. It was not working anymore, but I wanted to keep it. So, I painted it in this hippie style. Some of the environments are more imaginative, like for example, the forest. It should remind one of the forest which is here around my corner from the place where I live now. But it's not the forest where the actual events were happening. Honestly, I don't remember much how it looked like then. I just wanted to create a safe space. I’m showing difficult experiences, but the actual visual representation – the tree, where is a mirror, or the place where the demon was born - is a recreation of the real tree which is very precious to me , it gives nice feeling to me. 

How about the high school? It looks like Hogwarts.

- Yes, we wanted to create it as a library in Hogwarts. At the end we decided to do a little bit different lightning, but it still reminds you that a lot. I love “Harry Potter”, so – again – it's like traumatic experience is visually represented by something what's close to me, so it’s easier for me to virtually step into it again and for the viewers it shows some kind of inner world of mine .

You mentioned, that using your voice is a kind of signature. “Darkening” has three language versions: Czech, English and German.

- Now, it already has Chinese and Korean. 

Do you read these translations?

- No, my voice is only for Czech and English. In this case we decided to hire actors. They were selected by our partners, but it was not done in a way that I would direct them. I just picked the voice and then the local collaborators did that recording. 

I wanted to ask you why “Darkening” is directed by the voice, but you have already answered that it's because of the voice therapy. Could you tell me something about this kind of therapy?

- It started at the horse racing events where I was using my voice a lot to support the horses. Back then I was not much loud, now I think I'm louder, but it was the only place where I could really vocalize myself. When we were creating “Darkening”, I started to think about this, and how it was liberating for me to use the voice and shout out some tensions. So, I started to go to the voice therapy sessions. And I'm still going there, it's like 7 years when I'm attending. It’s a beautiful space where you have around 10-15 persons and together at the beginning you are doing vocalizations of some syllables, trying to think about where it goes from: the belly, the chest or from the backs. It's about combination of the body imagination and the voice, that you are putting together. At first you are doing these exercises with the therapist, and the second half is about singing emotional songs which are connected with some of your emotional states. After 7 years with one therapist I am going to change it now. I'm curious how it will work with someone else, maybe I will discover something new.

I must say that for me it was difficult to raise a voice. I was experiencing “Darkening” in the National Film Museum in Prague, and fortunately I was the only person there but even though I felt a little bit strange shouting publicly.

- Yes, it is fragile. It's not for everybody and it can be challenging.

There are two type of scenarios which can happen usually when you come to see the project and there are other people: you are afraid at the beginning and when you are doing this together with the other people, it can help you in a way that you can feel that all the others are doing the weird sounds. So it's kind of a protection; You know that it's socially allowed to do that, because the others are doing so. Then some kind of a relief is coming but it also can happen that some people really can't do this is, so they are staying silently and they are not putting the voice during the experience, which is also okay - you can go through the experience without using your voice.

There are also people who say, that doing it alone for them in the gallery would be very uncomfortable and it’s better to experience “Darkening” in the presence of the others. Somebody wants to do it alone, somebody: supported by the group.

The installation which you experienced in the museum in Prague should give you the feeling that you are somehow protected. There can be other people, but they are somehow visually not that close to you, because you have the strings suspended from the ceiling to the floor.

Of course it's challenging. One of my friends is very, very shy and she said that for her it was just a torture. 

Oh yes, I felt that torture during recent ART VR [Virtual Reality and Immersive Art Festival in Prague]. There was an experience called “EchoVision” [2024, byBotao Amber Hu, Jiabao Li, Danlin Huang, Jianan Johanna Liu, Xiaobo Aaron Hu, Yilan Tao] on exhibition „More-than-Human Perspectives”. I had to walk in bat-shaped mask and give sounds to let technology simulate echolocation. It was really very weird, pretending to be a bat among other people. 

What do you think about this installation of “Darkening” in National Film Museum in Prague? I like it, those black strings around you, very sensual. It was prepared by Magdalena Nováková, Michal Kreidl, Martin Černý, Jakub Jiřiště, Adéla Mrázová and the entire NaFilM team. Did they consult it with you? 

- Yes, It's really well communicating, what's happening inside the headset with these strings. I really like it. They had a lot of work with it because they were doing it on their own, and they have to cut so many strings...I was there while they were doing it and they were insane. Luckily they used their voice to get rid of the frustration (laugh) 

It is also haptic. Trying to catch the red scarf, that is flying away, you touch those strings. By the way, what is the symbolic of the red scarf?

- It doesn't have any personal connection – I didn’t have such scarf when I was young. Some lady in Venice said that she had never associated depression with a red color, that for her depression is grey. Red is anger, it is a dwelling inside us and it can't go out. 

The blood is red.

- Yeah, there's also a symbol of blood in the scene in the first forest. But there is more use of red in “Darkening”: the dress of the of the jockey at the horse racing or the letters in the library. It should show us some kind of a hidden mystery which is settling, a kind of a hidden anger. I think that the depression is a lot caused by not accepted anger in a person. The scarf is a kind of a red line.

But the scarf also makes you comfortable.

- At the end, yeah. That's why in the last scene the scarf is floating around you and then it covers your eyes in some kind of acceptance. Even though it's still red and provoking, you can accept it. 

So you have to accept yourself as you are. Let's come back to the voice. In one interview, you told that you had discovered different reactions, depending on the country: “At the Venice Film Festival, they were more active and open. Italians aren’t scared to use their voices. In Switzerland [Geneva International Film Festival], total silence. In the Czech Republic, too, people were reluctant to express themselves”.

- Maybe it’s a bit stereotypical explanation, but it's connected with common characteristics in which some nations can be stronger, some can be weaker. That situation in Switzerland was caused not only by the nature of the people, but also the installation itself was not much helping you to do that. The persons were uncovered there. In Korea also lot of people were very shy, but it's not representative, just my observation. 

Tell me please about the feedback. What people were telling you about this experience? I know you cooperate with schools, where experiencing “Darkening” is connected with meetings with therapeutists.

- We had some grants for school screenings. Now we are not doing it anymore, because of our capacity and money. But it was a great experience. The overall impact program in schools was very good. It was done in two ways. One way was that the students were going to the gallery where “Darkening” was exhibited, and we had 15 headsets there. It was very wild. Especially the scene with the horse racing: the kids were very loud. Usually the classes were visiting together, so the kids knew each other. They were familiar with themselves and it worked well that they could express themselves. Of course we had some issues: some kids who were very sensitive had to stop watching and then we took care of them together with the teacher.

Sometimes we were going to schools with our mobile cinema. We had a few tours like this around the Czech Republic. Then there was some interest in Netherlands and France, but I don't know how it ended up.

The feedbacks were different. We had postcards and some kids would write something on them and then give it to us. I have one in my office, saying “Great. Stay strong and do what you like, then it will be ok, dude”. Or “This was so moving. I loved yelling “go, Ready” (note: name of the horse). It made me want to start saying it to myself.” Mostly the feedback was nice: they were happy that they could talk about this issue which for example in my school age was not happening at all. Some of the kids did not pay that much attention for that was just the school program for them.

Did you have some child viewers with depression?

- Yes, we were cooperating with students of psychology. If some child took the headset off and doesn't feel well, they were there to help. Also school psychologists were interacting with them. And they could inform us, that some kid had this kind of problems. We’ve always said that everybody is welcome to watch “Darkening”, but they don't have to. Sometimes teachers decided that some kids are not feeling well to watch it     

I asked about it, because VR is often named “an empathy machine”, but there are also some studies about re-traumatization during the VR experience. 

- My old psychiatrist, for example, was not much okay with me working on “Darkening”, because she was afraid that something like that could happen to me. Which did not happen at then end - but we had to remake one scene with the attempt of suicide, as that was traumatizing for me (and I guess it would be for the others too).

We are always saying to everybody that if they have some experience with depression and they feel that they don't want to watch, it’s OK. I remember a girl who really wanted to see “Darkening” although the teacher said that it won’t be good for her. We assured her that it's up to her, but it can be difficult. Finally she decided not to watch it all, she stopped after few minutes So - yes, there is a thin line between building the empathy a reminding some trauma. But in our case we tried to offer the viewer the helping hand in the voice, so they can get rid of the difficult emotions, and the overall story ends positively, so I hoped we have not traumatized anybody.

In “Darkening” depression is a spiderish monster. 

- The initial idea was that it will be something between a spider and an octopus     …

Octopus is a very nice and intelligent creature! 

- Of course, but it can also be a very good stealthy fighter.

We wanted to show a creature with many tentacles, that can reach you: take you closer, maybe even absorb you. It should also remind you a bit Dementor from “Harry Potter”.

Before “Darkening” I didn't have the visual representation of my demon. Till nowadays, when I'm in this state of mind I am imagining the disease just how I created it for VR experience. It’ a also therapeutic to give your darkness a shape. 

Have you seen the final episode of “Stranger Things”?

- Yes, I was watching it now, all the holidays. 

Did you notice similarities? Vecna has many legs, it feeds on shame and fear. One of the protagonists is making his coming-out…

- Yes, but I haven't seen the whole “Stranger Things” series until this Christmas, so “Darkening” wasn’t influenced by this series. There is also a lot of red in “Stranger Things” as in Darkening. So they are a bit unintentional siblings indeed     (laugh) 

I asked about the octopus because in general in darkening the nature is positive and supportive. It gives you comfort. 

- Definitely, for some people it's even more important than for me. A lot of people with mental problems are saying that their main place where they recharge is the nature. For me it's water, which is interesting, because it's not presented in “Darkening much” - apart from the fountain, which we wanted to have it there for this reason.

The protagonist of “Darkening” is just a shape: blurred, looking fragile, defragmented. Why? 

- We wanted to create an abstract person, so you can actually project yourself in. But it still reminds me a bit: it has a curly hair, which I used to have when I was a child. So it's a kind of nebula person, which should create transition between “you” and “me”.

Did you have some technical issues during making “Darkening”?

- The most difficult was to create the final village scene. A lot of things are happening there: the collapsed village is rebuilding itself. It was hard to coordinate all the distracted parts so it somehow fluently goes well together.

Of course there was a challenge with the voice as well. We were still thinking about intensity and giving a freedom to the user. In part two you have to make the sound “shhh”, that often wasn’t recognized by the system. We had to add possibility to just say “silence”. 

In VR you are not able to create something visually as detailed as you would want, because it takes a lot of device’s procedural memory. We had to do the compromises. For example at the beginning it all should be more transparent and more like painted by the brush. We did it in the prototype which looked very different from the final product, but then we found out that it's not possible – it could be too hard for the device. 

Have your family seen “Darkening”?

- My brother and my father. My mum hasn't seen it. She says it's too hard for her. 

After “Darkening” you produced two experiences about war in Ukraine: “Fresh Memories: The Look" (2023), about the destruction of homes in Kharkiv and "Fragile Home" (2024). Do you consider them as an immersive journalism?

- Not much, because journalism for me is about information mostly, and both experiences which we made at Ukraine is more about sensation, I would say. The first part is about a visual connection: you are looking through the eyes of the Ukrainian people. The second part is connected with the topic of home. So, I would not call it immersive journalism. I saw such projects, as “You Destroy. We Create”, which was done by the German studio [VR documentary “The war on Ukraine’s culture”, dir. Felix Gaedtke and Gayatri Parameswaran: it “takes you on a 25-minute immersive journey through the war-torn country, where artists and professionals from the cultural sphere are busy protecting, rebuilding and creating art”]. For me that's the example of immersive journalism. There are some journalistic platforms, which started their own VR editions like Guardian or New York Times. Our Ukrainian projects are not about information.

Why did you decide to react so quickly and spontaneously on the war? 

- When the war started, we wanted to contribute to the to the thing and to help Ukrainian people and give them possibility to cooperate with us, to give them work. But also to show to the world what's happening in their country. Czech Republic was occupied by the Russians in 60s, 70s, and 80s, so it is for us a sensitive topic. I felt that it would be good to create something about war in Ukraine also because for Czech people it felt very personal. 

What is the difference between the first and the second part?

- First project was very quick. It was shot in 3 days nearby Kharkiv. The idea was to gather the authentic visual material and shoot it on 360 camera. We were inspired by Marina Abramovic’s project “The Artist Is Present”, in which you are looking into the eyes of the second person and you are trying to create an emotional connection. We wanted to experiment with this in VR and in the context of Ukraine. So it was more about connections among the people and their surrounding, but mostly the people. And the second part, “Fragile Home” was more about connection to the space, and it is done in a Mixed Reality.

So, the main idea was that your own home transforms into the Ukrainian home. Not a specific one, rather something that associates. The goal is to bring you this feeling: what's happening in Ukraine could happen in your own home as well.

Will you make the third part of this project? 

- No, it’s completed. Now I'm working on something else already. We have two projects, both connected with the mental health again.

The first one is called “Melodies of Resilience”, and it's about stage fright or performance anxiety. It's a story of one little bird who can't sing and he fell in love with the piano, but he is too nervous to perform. So, we are going on this journey with him to overcome this performance anxiety issues. It's inspired by the story of my granduncle Ivan Moravec, who was a famous pianist, and who had that kind of problems. Wish us luck, this month we will find out if we got the money for the main production or not. 

I hope you will!

- The second project called “What a Water Took” is more like immersive mixed reality installation about unlucky love. We combine the Czech folk songs with love and water. It’s a water like installation, that motivates you to send away your hard feelings about your past love. It may be therapeutic. We already prepared the prototype and we hope that next year the full version could be shown internationally.