Movie night: Closely Watched Trains (1966)

Sunday May 12th 2013, Movie night: Closely Watched Trains (“Ostre sledované vlaky”, Jiří Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1966, 93 min.), in Czech with English subtitles. Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00.

An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform. In the same time he success in antifascist resistance. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Closely Watched Trains “as expert and moving in its way as was Jan Kadar’s and Elmar Klos’s The Shop on Main Street or Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde”, two other recent films from Czechoslovakia. […Lees verder]

Movie night: Larks on a String (1969)

Sunday December 16th 2012, Movie night: Larks on a String (orginal titel: Skřivánci na niti) from Jiří Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1969, 94 min. In Czech with English subtitles. Door open at 20pm (films start at 21:00pm).

Although it was shot in 1968, Jiří Menzel’s sociopolitical comedy Larks On A String didn’t actually see the light of day until 1990, when it premiered and won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Censorship had been lifted in Czechoslovakia for a short period, resulting in a fleeting burst of liberalization, especially for filmmakers – but the freedom was soon crushed by the invasion of Soviet tanks, which restored Czechoslovakia’s oppressive regime. Communism once again held a vice-like grip over the country, and Menzel’s film (which had finished shooting) was banned. […Lees verder]