‘Czech Republic’ Archives
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) [...]
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 [...]
A Švankmajer timeline
During a routine office spring-clean last week, I came across an elaborate timeline that I drew up earlier this year, setting events in the life and career of Jan Švankmajer against a wider backdrop of Czech history and culture of the time.It began life as a crib sheet to help those baffled by the historical references in his 1990 film The Death [...]
Jan Švankmajer interview
Previously hidden behind a subscriber-only wall, the interview that I conducted with Jan Švankmajer for Vertigo magazine earlier this year (it was originally published in the Spring 2007 issue) now seems to be freely accessible. Great illustrations, too - though with this subject you're a bit spoilt for choice!
Best Foreign Film Oscar longlist announced
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a record 63 films are on the initial longlist for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The full list is here, and these are the Central and Eastern European submissions: Azerbaijan: Caucasia (d. Farid Gumbatov) Bosnia and Herzegovina: It's Hard to Be Nice/Teško je biti fin (d. Srđan Vuletić) - [...]
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 [...]
Sight & Sound on Lunacy
OK, I promise the next few posts will be about someone other than Jan Švankmajer, but the BFI has just uploaded a selection from the current Sight & Sound onto its website, including my extended review of Lunacy. (And I should also link to, and enthusiastically recommend, Kinoblog commenter David Sorfa's far more exhaustive analysis on the [...]
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.