This controversial feature blends documentary, archival footage and fiction into an elliptical narrative in which two young people in Prague, an ancient seat for the practice of alchemy, follow the trail for the mystical philosopher’s stone. History and future blend as brilliant montage sequences and fanciful leaps of the imagination work to posit questions about the legacy of the past and how it influences the individual’s personal freedom and responsibilityRead More »
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One of the film’s topics is shown in the credit sequence: from above we watch the tracks made in the snow by people in the street. Eventually we see the beaten tracks that people don’t leave. Then the camera moves down and we watch the people who made the tracks- a policeman prominent among them- as they walk around greeting each other. Until the snow melts only two people- the central character and his girlfriend- consider leaving the tracks.Read More »
A hillbilly inherits millions and goes to the city, leaving his village to live a rich man’s life in post communist Czech Republic.Read More »
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In Hezké chvilky bez záruky (English title: Pleasant Moments), acclaimed director Věra Chytilová manages to make profound statements on the nature of humanity with such a striking concealment that most viewers won’t even notice them. It’s a continuation of her post-New Wave career; the surrealist masterpiece Daisies is often pointed to as her greatest achievement, but she continued to make equally important films under communist rule – they just had to be so subversive the censors wouldn’t even notice. One of my favorites is 1977’s Panelstory, the definitive story of life in a panelak (apartment complex) with biting political commentary so hidden that it makes it all the more worthwhile to discover. As a senatorial candidate from the political party Strana Rovnost Šancí, Chytilová no longer remains in obscurity. Unfortunately for some, her post-New Wave films still do. But for those of us willing to give them a chance, they’re still as relevant and sublime as her efforts from forty years ago.Read More »
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Silvery Wind is a classic Czech film, based on a novel by Fráňa Šrámek first published in 1910.
The hero of the story is an enthusiastic and idealistic young student, who reaches maturity amidst small-town brutality, narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy.Read More »
Jan Nemec, a leading filmmaker of the Czech New Wave, creates an original portrait of one of the most provocative artists of the 20th century: Toyen (Marie Cerminova). As a female artist, Toyen broke through the male-dominated art world to create paintings and drawings often erotic in nature. She co-founded the surrealist movement in her native Prague, survived the Nazis and the Communists, maintained artistic and personal relationships with artists Jindrich Heisler (whom she hid during WWII) and Jindrich Styrsky, and was an active member of the French surrealist circle. Toyen is an essay film which mixes archival footage with re-enactments, poems by Toyen, Heisler and Styrsky, and a visual palette and soundscape that penetrate the interior life of this enigmatic and great artist. “Toyen remains a unique way of approaching an artist’s life…” (Peter Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema).Read More »
Shot in 1968, but banned by the Czech government until the fall of the Communist regime in 1990, Menzel’s wry comic drama is a hymn to humanity and nonconformity. The film’s principal characters are residents of a state-run junkyard / labour camp for those whose actions have been deemed counter-revolutionary. On one side of the yard live the men, most sent here for re-education. On the other side, are a group of women interned for the crime of attempted defection. Separately, the two groups lazily toil, sorting out piles of scrap metal (one huge pile is nothing less than a veritable mountain of crucifixes and religious icons); together, they flirt, philosophize, and occasionally sneak off behind the hillocks of slag to make love. Larks on a String is at once a stinging indictment of the repressive politics of Czechoslovakia’s past, and an endearing comedy and affecting love story.Read More »
Pavel Jurácek, one of the leading lights of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s, scripted this bleak portrait of a post-apocalyptic world. After simultaneous nuclear attacks by the East and West wipe out the lion’s share of the Earth’s population, a band of eight women in their mid-twenties to early thirties, led by an elderly female military officer, wander the landscape of Eastern Europe searching for food, supplies, and other survivors. In time, the women discover a dilapidated hotel that has become home for a lonely old man who guards a few tattered remnants of the former civilization — a television that no longer works, an old newspaper, and a wind-up phonograph. Starkly photographed in black-and-white, The End of August at the Hotel Ozone marked the second collaboration between Jurácek and director Jan Schmidt, who previous co-wrote and co-directed the short subject Postava K PodpíráníRead More »
A WW2 story of a young Austrian soldier running from the Russian army and a woman whom he forces to come along in order to save his wounded mate.Read More »