VÉRA CHYTILOVÁ | CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1969, 96m | 6PM, FRIDAY 27 JULY
The concern with visual innovation and pictorial composition, shared by Chytilová and cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, is obvious, and links the film with Daisies, which Kučera also photographed. But the playful spirit of the earlier film has been supplanted, here, by a more sober and pensive form of experimentation.– Alison Frank, Electric Sheep Magazine
The most experimental film of the Czechoslovak New Wave had Véra Chytilová again collaborating with her Daisies cohort of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, screenwriter and costume designer Ester Krumbachová, and editor Miroslav Hájek, in addition to the Studio Ypsilon theatre troupe. In this gnomic and wildly psychedelic farewell to the Summer of Love-like ambience and freedoms of the Prague Spring, Edenic mythology feeds into an absurdist, richly symbolic, relationship-cum-serial-killer drama, accompanied throughout by a rapturous Zdeněk Liška score.
Courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague
Czech with English subtitles
Unrated 15+
Co-presented with the Czech and Slovak Film Festival and the Australian Cinémathèque.
This is a free screening taking place at the Australian Cinémathèque, GoMA, as part of the retrospective Original Sins: Resistance and Feminism in the Avant-Garde Cinema of Véra Chytilová.
