The cinema of the Czechoslovakian Film Miracle of 1963 to 1969 offers a marvelous example of art asserting that, ipso facto, human values prevail. These films could be mournful and mordantly funny at the same time, depicting a society that makes apparatchiks out of nudniks, and enemies out of friends. They could be lyric and surrealistic. Some used the not-so-distant war as a metaphor for the everyday nightmare of a moment when, as Yvette Biro wrote, “power is armed against the individual.” In this series we explore some of the more rarely shown Czechoslovakian films from the PFA Collection, and acknowledge our gratitude to George Gund III, whose expertise and passion for Eastern European cinema has brought a wealth of such films to the collection. Moreover, it was thanks to Gund that many of these films could be shown at PFA when they were languishing on the censor's shelf in their native Czechoslovakia. Indeed, some had the dubious distinction of being “Banned Forever,” which only goes to prove one screen character's observation, “Things are only obvious when they're history. When you're in the middle of it, you make mistakes.”
Notes by Judy Bloch unless otherwise indicated.
