‘Czechoslovakia’ Archives
Valerie and her Disc of Wonders
For a tiny DVD label that's so obviously run on a shoestring, Second Run has always punched well above its weight when it comes to creating a distinctive brand identity. Even in the very early stages, when they'd source the artwork from a single still, they had an admirably consistent approach to layout and typography - and, pretty much uniquely [...]
Irony Man
It's dated yesterday, but I don't think it ever made it into the printed version of the Guardian, which is why I didn't spot it until now. Anyway, here's an excellent interview with Jiří Menzel as his latest film I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007) finally gets a belated and brief British cinema run.
Catching up
Apologies for the apparent lack of activity over the past few days: I've spent them preparing the various multimedia elements of my talk Andrzej Wajda: An Introduction, which I'll be presenting at the BFI Southbank tonight at 6.15 - and, as ever, these things take much longer than expected!Polish Radio recently interviewed me about the Wajda [...]
Zdeněk Liška on Totally Radio
As I may have hinted on a few occasions in the past, I'm a bit of a fan of the Czech composer Zdeněk Liška (1922-1983) - which is why I was delighted to get an e-mail from Joe Walker, possibly Liška's most obsessive fan, informing me that he's recorded an hour-long celebration of the man and his work and uploaded it to the Totally Radio [...]
Jiří Menzel in London
Last Sunday saw the Barbican's London premiere (and only the second UK screening) of Jiří Menzel's I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007), his sixth adaptation of the work of the great Czech writer and eccentric Bohumil Hrabal following his contribution to the anthology Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně, [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force: Screentalk
Last night I attended the keenly-awaited Censorship as a Creative Force Screentalk discussion at London's Barbican Arts Centre, in which Jiří Menzel, István Szabó and Agnieszka Holland (an eleventh-hour replacement for Andrzej Wajda) discussed their experience of censorship under the various totalitarian régimes under which they had to spend [...]
The Struggles of František Vláčil
Anyone who's planning to visit Prague between now and the end of May might well be interested in the exhibition František Vláčil: Zápasy (or The Struggles of of František Vláčil), a multimedia tribute to the great Czech director of Marketa Lazarová (1967).Those of us trapped elsewhere will have to make do with its bilingual (Czech-English) [...]
Všechno nejlepší!
Had he not died in 1983, yesterday would have been the 86th birthday of the great Zdeněk Liška, unarguably the greatest of all Czech film-score composers, and someone who for my money ranks alongside the likes of Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone for his instantly recognisable blend of tireless innovation (both musically and sonically) and [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force
In late April, the Barbican Arts Centre in London is hosting a week-long season, Censorship as a Creative Force, in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre and the Hungarian Cultural Centre.I've already booked tickets for the two highlights - a panel discussion on April 25 with the extraordinarily impressive line-up of [...]
Derek Malcolm’s Century of Cinema
While researching something else (as is always the way), I stumbled upon former Guardian critic Derek Malcolm's A Century of Films - a survey of his personal Top 100, with a robust defence of each film's inclusion. And on glancing down the list again for the first time since 2001, I notice that nine of his choices came from central and eastern [...]