"Apprehensions, hopes, dreams, someone's touch...I would always like to have these things in my films."-Karel KachyùnaCzech director Karel Kachyùna (born 1924) is a visual poet whose rural upbringing in his native Moravia infuses even his most politically acerbic films with a personal lyricism. His work has been called "the cinematic poem of feelings...where small details, objects, and nature come to life." At the same time, as one of the first graduates of the Prague Film School, in 1951, at the height of Stalinist restrictions on filmmakers, Kachyùna's career shows the political commitment of the older generation of Czech directors such as himself and Vojcech Jasny (Cassandra Cat) who survived to make striking films on painful and taboo subjects. His collaboration, beginning in the sixties, with the talented, prolific, and influential writer Jan Procházka made Kachyùna an unofficial "poet laureate," until the dream of changing the regime from within proved impossible and he and Procházka became merely unofficial. Together they created a remarkable series of lyric, psychologically astute films about adolescence that explore the thwarted urge for freedom, and several important films that demythologize official history while being visual masterpieces. Having two of these (Long Live the Republic! and Carriage to Vienna) in our collection, plus the appearance in recent years of The Ear (released only after the Velvet Revolution) and The Cow, shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has made us wish to see other works by this Czech master, who since 1990 has been a professor at the Prague Film Academy. We now have that rare opportunity. This series is made possible by the cooperation of the National Film Archive in Prague and the Czech Center New York. Special thanks to Vladimir Opela, Petr Polednak, Rene Vasicek.Sunday March 15, 1998
