Zdenek Sirovy in Person "Where there is no truth, there is no art," said the writer Eva Kanturkova, whose short novel Funeral Ceremonies looked back at the totalitarian effect of collectivization in the postwar years. Her screen adaptation, written in collaboration with director Zdenek Sirovy, transforms the tale of a woman's attempts to bury her husband in his native village into a stark drama with classical overtones; meticulously shot in black-and-white, it appears at once authentic and mythic. The film is divided into three parts: In the first, set in 1965, Matylda (Jaroslava Ticha), whose husband Chladil is on his deathbed, journeys to their native village to negotiate for his burial with an adversarial councilman who has the local priest cowed. The second part is a flashback to the early spring of 1951, when Chladil, speaking out against collectivization, is stripped of his land and banished from the village. In the third part, his funeral becomes a silent vigil of protest. Filmed in the midst of the 1968 Soviet invasion, Funeral Ceremonies was immediately banned and its director made to leave the Barrandov studios. It showed in a clandestine screening on the very eve of the student demonstration of November 17, 1989, which it was said to have influenced; was awarded the grand prize (the Golden Nail) for shelved films at the Bratislava Festival '90; had its official premiere last May, with President Vaclav Havel in attendance; and was a highlight of the recent Karlovy Vary film festival and selected for the 1990 Montreal Film Festival.