Czech Horror and Fantasy on Film

8/1/03 to 8/22/03

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, August 8

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

INVISIBLE
- Friday, August 22 7:30
This fanciful reinvention of the lunatic-in-the-attic tradition is filled with duplicitous twists and incestuous turns-along with repression, insanity, and the prospect of invisibility.
SHORTS BY JAN SVANKMAJER
- Friday, August 22 9:35
Provocative, unnerving, blackly comic animations by the country's preeminent animator and fantasy filmmaker, appropriately nicknamed The Alchemist of the Surreal.
THE FIFTH HORSEMAN IS FEAR
- Friday, August 15 7:30
A Jewish physician's nightmarish search for morphine in Nazi-occupied Prague turns into an intense Orwellian fable about fear itself. A major revival.
THE EAR
- Friday, August 15 9:30
Shot under the watchful eyes of the Soviet occupying forces, then banned, this tale of paranoia, surveillance, and marital mistrust is a chilling cross between 1984 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS
- Friday, August 8 7:30
A '70s cult classic about a girl's initiation into the world of desire. "The film's logic is that of the subconscious, its images those of Gothic fairy tale and the psychiatrist's couch, and its overall effect stunning."-Time Out. With shorts The Raven and Defector.
MORGIANA
- Friday, August 8 9:20
A novel and offbeat fantasy, this turn-of-the-century thriller tells of sisters, one good, one very bad, both played by Iva Janzurova in a virtuoso performance. With short Little Cousins.
THE PIED PIPER
- Friday, August 1 7:30
Introduction and Booksigning by Steven Jay Schneider. Jirí Bárta's unique animation combines puppetry, painting, and live-action (the rats!) to create an expressionistic folk metaphor for the fall of a materialistic society. With Bárta short The Last Theft.
WHO KILLED JESSIE?
- Friday, August 1 9:30
A genre-bending mix of sci-fi, slapstick, and '60s Pop art-with a decidedly Eastern European take on the joys of anarchy. With short Till Early Morning.

Czech Horror and Fantasy on Film

8/1/03 to 8/22/03

These thematically and stylistically diverse films, made between 1964 and 2000, display immense artistic creativity and an imaginative visual treatment of real-life social concerns. Through the sheer forcefulness of their directors' styles, they transcend their particular time and place to explore such universal themes as fate, lust, greed, madness, and death.

The surrealistic animation of Jan Svankmajer, the brilliant puppetry of Jirí Barta, the noirish mise-en-scène of Karel Kachyna, the expressionistic set designs of Zbynek Brynych, and the Gothic excess of Juraj Herz are among the treasures found lurking in the shadowy corners of Czech cinema. And while the utterly unique visions present in these films may at first seem to have little in common besides a focus on irrational minds and the undesirable consequences of desperate actions, watching them in the context of this series reveals a surprising unity. An injection of...

Steven Jay Schneider
Czech Center New York

On Friday, August 1, guest curator Steven Jay Schneider will join us to sign copies of his new book, Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe. Schneider has published widely on the horror film and related genres and is the author of The Cinema of Wes Craven: An Auteur on Elm Street.

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Guest curator Steven Jay Schneider organized this traveling series in conjunction with the Czech Center New York. Prints for this series were kindly provided by the National Film Archive in Prague, the Slovak Film Institute, the Prague Film Academy, and Zlín Film School. Special thanks to Irena Kovarova.