‘Current Features’ Archives
František Vláčil: an introduction
The recent retrospectives and DVD boxes of films by the long-neglected Japanese master Mikio Naruse serve to emphasise the wealth of important cinema that still remains to be discovered outside the established canons. František Vláčil (1924-1999) may be Naruse's closest equivalent in Czech cinema, not because their aesthetic and thematic [...]
The Devil’s Trap
Ďáblova past. Czechoslovakia, 1961, black and white, 87 minsFrantišek Vláčil's second feature was the first of a loose trilogy set in the distant past. All three films (the others being Marketa Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees/Údolí včel, both 1967) take place at a time of fundamental ideological conflict and upheaval - in the case [...]
Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe
Édes Emma, drága Böbe Hungary, 1992, colour, 81 mins. István Szabó’s return to his native Hungary after over a decade of international acclaim produced a film that’s a stark contrast not only to the glossy, star-studded production values of Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985), Hanussen (1988) and Meeting Venus (1991), but [...]
Wojciech J. Has on DVD
As the Barbican Centre in London gears up for a long overdue part retrospective of the career of the man I recently described in Sight & Sound as Polish cinema's only authentic surrealist, I thought I'd post another DVD overview for the benefit of those who can't get there - or indeed those who can, and who'd like to explore further. The good [...]
Hungarian New Wave: Melancholy and Silence
During the dozen or so days I spent at the Era New Horizons festival in Wrocław last month, I divided much of my time between compulsory jury duty (i.e. watching all thirteen films in the New Polish Films competition) and sampling as much as my schedule would allow of their mouthwatering 1960s/70s Hungarian retrospective, 'Melancholy and [...]
Era New Horizons: New Polish Films 1
I spent much of the end of July attending the 9th Era New Horizons film festival in Wrocław, Poland, where I was simultaneously covering it for Sight & Sound and sitting on the five-strong jury for the New Polish Films competition. There were thirteen entries (all feature-length Polish fiction films released after 31 July 2008) and two [...]