‘Czechoslovakia’ Archives
The Hand
Ruka Czechoslovakia, 1965, colour, 18 mins Universally recognised as both the founder and the supreme master of the Czech puppet cinema tradition (an accolade far less trivial within Czech culture than it might seem in the West, where puppetry has long been regarded almost exclusively as a children's medium), Jiří Trnka (1912-1969) was [...]
My Sweet Little Village
Vesničko má středisková Czechoslovakia, 1985, colour, 100 mins A gigantic box-office hit on its original release (5 million tickets sold in a country whose population wasn't much more than double that), Jiří Menzel's gently subversive comedy My Sweet Little Village is clearly regarded with immense and continuing affection in the Czech [...]
Jiří Menzel on DVD
Going from private e-mail, last week's Kieślowski DVD survey seemed to have gone down pretty well - so here's a similar overview of Jiří Menzel's output. Unlike the situation with Kieślowski, if you aren't familiar with the Czech DVD market you could be forgiven for thinking that there's next to nothing available besides the inevitable [...]
Update
Apologies for the lack of updates - things have been insanely busy over the past fortnight, what with the Ken Russell retrospective at BFI Southbank (for which I contributed a 75-minute illustrated talk and met the man himself a few days later) and various other work-related things - including an interview about Jan Švankmajer for MovieMail's [...]
BFI Švankmajer DVD in Czech media
I'm taking it on trust that this interview with me in Czech daily paper Hospodářské noviny does a reasonable job of conveying what I originally said in English... Closer to home, more rave reviews of the Švankmajer DVD box have appeared in The Scotsman and Teletext, as well as today's Metro (page 30) - though not, for some reason, the online [...]
Eye For Film on Jan Švankmajer
I'm hoping to have a post on the dystopian sci-fi films of Polish filmmaker Piotr Szulkin published very soon (I watched four key titles last week, and they're fascinating on all sorts of levels) - but in the meantime another long review of the Švankmajer DVD set has just been published. It's by Anton Bitel, and it's on the Eye For Film site.
DVD Times on Jan Švankmajer
This is the first full-length online review of the BFI's new triple-disc Jan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - with 5,000 words spread over four pages, it must be one of the longest reviews ever posted on DVD Times. Believe me, that's not a complaint! It's officially released next Monday, but [...]
Marina Warner on Jan Švankmajer
On Saturday, The Guardian published what is by a very considerable margin the longest and most eloquent piece on Jan Švankmajer's work ever seen in the pages of a British newspaper. In the print version, Marina Warner's article occupied the double-page centre spread of the Review section, illustrated with three large stills, but the full text is [...]
Intimate Lighting
Intimní osvětlení Czechoslovakia, 1965, black and white, 72 minsAlthough less famous than the Oscar-winning diptych of The Shop on the High Street (Obchod na korze, 1965) and Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966) or the early work of Miloš Forman (which Ivan Passer co-scripted and worked on as assistant director), Intimate [...]
Inside the Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer
If you're at a very loose end next Wednesday (13th), I'll be part of a four-strong panel discussing the work of Jan Švankmajer at BFI Southbank, along with: Suzanne Buchan, head of the Animation Research Centre at University College for the Creative Arts (her piece 'Shifting Realities: The Brothers Quay Between Live Action and Animation' is [...]