VÉRA CHYTILOVÁ | CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1976, 92m | 8:15PM, FRIDAY 20 JULY
Eden’s the garden from which the apple comes in this jazz-inflected riff on gender business, where the bassline is vaudeville and the dominant tone wryly energetic comedy drama.
– GE, Time Out
Véra Chytilová’s belated return to filmmaking after the suppression of the Prague Spring is a remarkable feminist screwball comedy set around a maternity ward. Forgoing the more experimental approaches to film form and aesthetics that characterised her late ’60s work, it nonetheless includes no shortage of startling imagery. Fellow New Wave director Jiří Menzel stars as a nerdy, philandering ob-gyn opposite a quixotic young nurse played by Dagmar Bláhová of Australia’s Neighbours.
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.
