CANCELED: Case for a Rookie Hangman

Like the short The Uninvited Guest (screening February 12), Case for a Rookie Hangman is an allegory of life in socialist Czechoslovakia whose allusion to uncomfortable truths caused it to be “banned forever.” This is the final feature by writer-director Juráček, who contributed much to the successes and embodied the spirit of the Czech New Wave. For his imaginative film, Juráček adapted part three of Gulliver’s Travels into a sci-fi journey through the familiar landscapes of a socialist state, transformed into an unsettling new world for discovery by (in the film’s alternate title) a “New Gulliver.”