When the Russian army rolled into Prague in the spring of 1968, Milos Forman was in Paris writing the script for his first American film, Taking Off. He may have missed the crackdown in Czechoslovakia, but he hadn't missed years of earlier political repression. No wonder, then, that the comically rebellious and often scandalous films he made in his homeland should be riddled with ridicule for an authoritarian system in decline. Seminal films in the Czech New Wave, Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's Ball (1967) astounded audiences with their satiric innovations, combining amateur actors, documentary techniques, and riotous allegories that played out as generational collisions-young rock 'n' rollers versus their polka parents. Forman's rarely seen earliest films, Audition (1963) and Black Peter (1964), already displayed his organic sense of people gathered, the ebb and flow of folksy interaction and fondly depicted foibles. His transitional work, Taking Off (1971), retained the sharp eccentricities of European cinema while delving into an America in the midst of hippie upheaval. Seen in this context, Forman's first truly American film, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), becomes not a story of spirited madness, but a fable of authority crushing the will of those who contest it. Join us as we view Milos Forman stepping out from behind the Iron Curtain.