Out of the Past

The documentary captures the two-month working process of 81-year-old Andrzej Wajda while shooting exteriors for Katyn, a film that reflects the tragedy of his own family. More than just a close-up look at his masterful management of a massive shoot, the eloquent fragments compose a portrait of this exceptional creator, winner of an Academy Honorary Award in 2000.

Maciej, protagonist of the war drama Ashes and Diamonds, is the prototype of Wajda’s tragic hero, exposed to the harsh forces of his day and brought to ruin. Through costuming and his work with his powerful lead actor Zbigniew Cybulski, the director aligned Maciej with the young 1950s generation of revolt, thereby catapulting the hero to the status of a national icon.

Brdečka’s best-known animated piece is based on an original idea by Miloš Macourek and won the Grand Prix at the prestigious Annecy International Animated Film Festival. The simple plot unfolds during a school art lesson, during which a young boy’s vivid imagination confronts the “realism” required by his stuffy teacher. With its ironic tone, the piece sees the filmmakers clearly espousing free thought in defiance of rigid conservatism.

David Lynch – perhaps everyone knows the director, but can they say the same about David Lynch the painter, sculptor, and musician? And can these roles be somehow separated? Just this once the standard bearer of postmodern cinematography leaves the door closed on his bizarre fictional worlds, admitting us instead to his own private realm, which he introduces through personal memories dedicated to his youngest daughter.

The characters in this unconventional musical horror flick by the Caban brothers find themselves reflecting upon what truly defines art. Their personal stories, however, also spill over into the narrative of Mozart’s famous opera Don Giovanni. This unclassifiable cinematic form, influenced by a video-clip aesthetic, was one of the most remarkable audiovisual projects to come out of the nineties.

An experimental study in black and white tracing the stages of human life through the transformation of a man’s face. Both Jiří Anderle’s masterful drawings and Jiří Kolafa’s music help to create the various ideas and associations underlying the work.

A film featuring minimalist animation, inspired not only by the well-known tragic folk ballad but, above all, by the artistic style of self-taught naivist painter František Braun, who worked with Jiří Trnka. Here Brdečka conveys his poetic sense of kitsch, blended with a melancholy irony.

In French cinema, the proverbial trees that block the forest from view bear the name the Nouvelle vague. This film, an original distillation from the inexhaustible arsenal of images and forms that hides the forest (i.e. classic French film), was created by a director who always differed from his colleagues in the extent to which he immersed himself in the history of the art form – Bertrand Tavernier.

This brilliant parody of the classic Western, which apparently had master of the genre John Ford rolling in the aisles, is unique among Czech comedies. Others of its type usually disappear together with their film-viewing generation, while Lemonade Joe enchants audiences today just as it did back then. You can bet your bottom dollar you won’t find a single minute without an original idea, witty rejoinder, or ingenious special effect.

Via a fin-de-siècle tale of ill-fated love that ultimately prevails, this film reflects the nostalgic interest Jiří Brdečka and designer Kamil Lhoták had in both obsolete technology and the golden age of slapstick comedy. Brdečka’s recurring theme of a couple in love makes its first appearance in the film.

Another Brdečka masterpiece, this film is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which the author used as a parable for the immortality of culture and art. In the context of the occupation of Czechoslovakia the previous year, the work’s underlying message is clear. Visually, the film is inspired by the Pompeii frescos and, from a literary perspective, by Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Adapting a 1930s song, Brdečka presents a ballad of true love between a miner and his sweetheart in a tale that ends in tragedy. This first collaboration between the filmmaker and the distinctive artist Jitka Walterová is an authentic tribute to proletarian poetry, but without the period lip service paid to contemporary ideology.

A fairy-tale grotesque for adults about a voracious prince and a fragile princess. In order to be able to marry his beloved, the young man pretends to live only on the fragrance of flowers while, in reality, he gorges himself on food in his secret chamber… Jiří Brdečka’s last animated film.

An animated Gothic tale based on Gérard de Nerval’s short story about a young man crossed in love, who asks the wizard Gonin for help and suffers the consequences. The film has its share of black humour and a certain surrealist edge. Designer Miroslav Štěpánek took his inspiration from 17th-century engravings and the work of Jacques Callot.

In an era when Slovakia was a newfangled fascist satellite, the protagonist of this Academy Award-winning drama, shown here for the first time in its brand new restored version, accepts an offer to Aryanize a piece of Jewish property. The decision is immoral and the price is steep regardless of excuses. Are ordinary people really always powerless? That’s at least what Tono says to soothe his smarting conscience. The digitized print of The Shop on Main Street came about in cooperation with the Czech Film Foundation and the State Film Fund, Karlovy Vary IFF, UPP (Universal Production Partners), Elmar Klos (heir of the director), and Ivan Šlapeta (Cinematographer), with financial support from the Ministry of Culture.

The dramatic story of a successful rural actor whose life is destroyed by a theater engagement in the big city and by an overpowering love for his much younger wife, also an actor. As the film is silent, there was no problem casting international stars: The four main roles were given to a Czech, an Italian, a German, and a Frenchman.

An errant soccer ball, deserted back stairways dilapidated by time, and a few animal observers – these are the unusual protagonists of a breathtakingly composed visual study, an unforgettable Iranian filmmaker’s enchanting farewell to the silver screen. The film will be screened together with the documentary 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami.

Inspired by an old broadside ballad, Jiří Brdečka brings us a woeful tale of a veteran returning home who is accidentally killed by his own parents. Combining Eva Švankmajerová’s paintings with cutout animation, special effects, and even a live actor, the filmmaker once again brings into play his fondness for naive folk kitsch.

After his departure from this world, a titan of modern film became the protagonist of a deeply personal and harmonious portrait compiled by his friend and colleague. This poetic collection of moments of creative ecstasy and joie de vivre presents Kiarostami with a heightened sense of immediacy that forgoes commentary and secondhand memories.

The endlessly fascinating shower scene (i.e. murder) in Hitchcock’s Psycho took a week to shoot. Thus each and every shot of the most chilling joke in film history has its place, and the sophisticated puzzle it presents is worth decoding. Thanks to the enthusiastic creators of this documentary collage, film analysis has never before been this entertaining or engaging.