První veřejnoprávní
in co-production with Slovak Film Institute, Cinemart and UPP
25 from the Sixties, or Czechoslovak New Wave
A documentary film Part I
Script
Sound
Editing
Directors of Photography
Production Manager
Produced by
Directed by
The success of the Czechoslovakian New Wave
lies in a nationalization of cinematography in 1945.
This system was to guarantee
a financial and creative independence to Czechoslovakian film
but after 1948 it became a victim. Of the communist manipulation.
Only a few filmmakers were able to wrench out of this context
in the fifties, like Alfred Radok or Vaclav Krska.
Meanwhile several generations graduated at FAMU,
especially the last one which came to this school around 1957,
it wrenched out of this context because the school climate was free.
This liberalization from around 1963, I mean political liberalization,
brought in not just a new generation which had just been born at FAMU.
Even some old filmmakers joined them
and this state-paid freedom brought "the Czechoslovakian film miracle".
The Czechoslovakian film gained respect at foreign festivals,
in Venice, Cannes, Locarno, Mannheim, or Oberhausen,
it even won some Oscar awards.
We would like to tell you a story of the Czechoslovakian New Wave
illustrated by 25 films and their makers,
their rise and fall caused by the political persecution
which followed an invasion in 1968
and was caused by this New Wave reformatory ethos.
The Sun in a Net is a new film
produced by Feature Film Studio at Koliba, Slovakia.
It is not easy to be a film actor.
The most important thing is to have a photogenic face.
But the director of photography Stanislav Solomanyi
and director Stefan Uher will find a way to deal with it.
If we were to search for the beginnings of the New Wave,
we'd definitely come as far as to films by Stefan Uher.
His special way of looking at life in Bratislava city
was way ahead of the New Wave.
Such a strong and emotional attitude had never before appeared in a film,
nor this kind of looking at lives of young confused people
who are trying to find their way in this world.
I don't think our film had ever seen anything like this before.
It had been a long known fact
that literature had gotten much much further than film.
So I persuaded Alfonz Bednar
who had just published his new book Hours and Minutes.
The film was practically authentic.
It was the time we lived in
and it must have been reflected in the film. See, the TV aerials?
Typical for Bratislava architecture.
Of course I didn't want to have a sky with huge clouds in my film,
it looks like a tourist promo.
I never wanted to shoot with the sun behind my back,
it flattens the picture.
I knew there must not be a hard artificial light on the set
so I had to create a technical space to gain some softer light.
- Is Mars this way? - Yes - Is it blue? - No. Mars is red.
Is there a blue star somewhere? What do you think?
Mum!
Its very interesting aesthetics comes from an effort
to distinguish this film visually from all previous Slovak films.
Its score, photography, scouting locations,
or using collages made by the main protagonist.
It all together created a very emotional space of this film.
Hands, a strange image of people.
They don't lie, they can't pretend,
not even when scribbling a line on a closet.
The Sun in a Net is considered an initiatory work of the New Wave,
but the encounter of Uher and Bednar was based on artistry.
The Sun in a Net is very stylized.
Fajolo doesn't photograph hands randomly, this is a working class,
through the hands we recognize people, their trueness,
there is also a critical view of our fathers' generation.
Fajolo tells his father:
So I ingratiate myself and you screwed up, Mr Brain.
And things like that.
You screwed up. That's the thing. You're an ex-intelligent.
What did you study for?
You screwed up and I have to take temporary jobs.
In the 60's there came up talks about a problem of estrangement.
Individuals were growing apart from a collective
and this topic had been a taboo until this film, a turning point,
where people started talking about an individuality.
Keep your hand like that.
You're a loser, Fajolo. The solar eclipse is coming.
Stefan came across Belankova in a TV studio and insisted on her
to wear her casual clothes.
I was to go through her wardrobe and select costumes.
It was the touch of neorealism and desire to get rid of stylization
and to show a real human being.
- Why talk? Are you scared? - You're scared yourself. Idiot.
You are. Peta was asking about you. Any idea of why?
We went purposefully after a concrete music by Zelienka
and after sounds composed of real noises.
The editing room was full of these recordings which we'd choose from.
Zelienka was going through a phase of electronic music
so they composed these sounds in a TV electronic studio.
It was based on a visual image of the TV aerials
as if the aerials were sending out some electronic message
and music conformed to this conception.
Bela, we've reached to the bridge, haven't we?
I can sense water.
Mila, be careful, water might be deep out there.
I guess filmmakers accepted the film immediately and enthusiastically
while the communist nomenclature started to search for symbols
which were in fact never there,
but they considered the blind mother a symbol of communist blindness.
Or the bridge on the drained dam a symbol of bemired communism.
These interpretations are absurd but it was a reality back then.
This is such a quiet cove. So still.
The water surface is like a mirror.
Uher doesn't have any superhero who has to fight his way through.
I'd say he is much more inward.
I think that a combination of this metaphorical language
and a rough portrayal of reality made him a great director.
It doesn't pay off to wait for the Black Sun for 120 years.
Black roads, The Black Sun...
I'm not sure when Chytilova made her film Ceiling,
I guess right after Forman's Black Peter, what I say is:
The New Wave equals FAMU.
As far as I know, Forman called Uher, because of The Sun in a Net,
St John the Baptist of the Czechoslovakian New Wave.
Semafor theatre was a viva aqua - the only source back then.
Wejust loved it.
I'll never forget those 50's and the ideological fury.
You couldn't even mention the word rock'n'roll back then.
Reduta was packed and Jiri Suchy started singing:
"Rok" after "Rok" we wonder how we change every "rok".
And there were two finks right behind me saying:
Man, he sings in Czech. The "rok" is Czech, man.
But what is he singing about? We wonder?
We don't wonder, we know!
Suchy claims that he lent me a 16mm camera but no way,
I bought it, it was a dodgy, loud Zeiss with great optics
so I went to Suchy and Slitr
and said: Listen, I'll shoot a home video for you two
so you can see how handsome you were when you're old.
And they agreed.
So I started to shoot these amateur films with this Zeiss
and a Grundig magnetophone.
Sounds good. Now you, Eva.
You're off key.
I think that my advantage was I'd never studied directing.
Nothing was impossible for me.
Let's do it this way. We can't. Why not? Just do it.
I could afford to do anything thanks to my blessed ignorance.
Let's do something I believe in something I like, the truth.
There came Yvonne Prenosilova,
an amateur singer in a fluffy cardigan with a guitar, and bang.
Or Lorencova who is singing the funny children song,
and then I come up and join her, it was a pure improvisation.
Could you say your name into the microphone for us, please?
Kresadlova.
When she introduced herself as Kresadlova, I was sure
Forman made the name up for her. I loved how perfectly it fitted.
As we were watching the dailies and saw her entering the room,
she was so beautiful and I asked Slitr:
Why didn't we actually hired this girl into our ensemble?
And Forman, sitting behind us, said: "Because you're idiots."
- We could sing together. - Lf it helps... - Well, give it a go.
It was one of those things.
Those nonsense, untrue, artificial films of the socialist realism.
Seeing normal humans on a screen,
letting them speak or sing the way they speak every day,
it was like a vision for me.
Excuse me, can you tell me if I passed or not?
See, we must listen to the tape we've recorded here,
then we'll send you a letter.
See, I need to know today because I ran away from work
and I thought I'd give them a notice and wouldn't go back.
Alright, I'll tell you then. You've failed.
There was a creative group Sebor-Bor at Barrandov.
Very nice people.
One day I brought them 2 reels of film, they watched it
and said: We'll give you 60 thousand and you finish it.
Somebody came with an idea to put two films together,
Audition and If Only They Ain't Had Them Bands.
Then Milos got the idea
with Mr Vostrcil and the brass band from Kolin.
We went to Kolin, started shooting
and I felt that soon we'd need that father character.
So I come to the town hall
and there was a brass band rehearsing.
So I sneak in and there was this glass door
so I peep through a hole
and there he is, the man, and I knew immediately, a miracle.
If it's not there, it's busy.
Mr Stela pours it on. Are you asleep? What is it?
A party? Well, sure, I myself tend to be sleepy after a party.
On Friday I was very sleepy.
So I run straight to the hotel. Milos was still in bed, I say:
You've got to go with me I have found him!
And he says: Calm down, let me have my breakfast.
And I say: No, he can be gone by then, they're rehearsing.
So we both went back there.
Now crisp and sharp. All of us. Each player is a solo player.
Stop!
Low tones.
So we waited till they finished
because we didn't dare we were just peeping in.
And then we approached him
and asked him if he was interested, you know.
And when will you need me?
And we said: On Wednesday, bandmaster.
- Wednesday doesn't suit me. - Why? Why not?
We are playing at a funeral.
How about after the funeral? How long can it take?
And he says: It depends on who died.
If it's some former communist then it takes a bit longer.
If it's a bourgeois than we're done in a jiffy.
So we took him to the hotel to show him what's it all about
and we let him read a part of the script
where a father is scolding his son.
And as he read it, it seemed as if he'd written it himself.
I like zealous people.
Music is the most beautiful thing in the world!
But not for you, apparently.
I won't push you on.
Pack your bags and follow your own heart.
We don't need you here. No.
Go and don't look back.
Film Black Peter came out in the same year as Audition.
It also shows the cooperation of Forman, Passer and Papousek
who joined the two on the next films until The Firemen's Ball.
Milos Forman was of course the leading figure,
capable of motivating non-actors and bring the best out of them.
The result is their spontaneous, seemingly undirected performance
however, all those films had been precisely prepared.
As a student Jaromil Jires got famous for his film experiment
The Hall of Lost Steps.
He was one of the few who were members of the Communist party.
It was no formal thing, he truly believed in its mission
and I think he manifested this conviction in his film The Cry
which actually follows the line of The Hall of Lost Steps
by reflecting anxiety of what had been happening in the world.
The Berlin crisis, the Caribbean crisis.
I wish you were the pregnant one, you could hide it under your suit.
See, I'm pregnant too now, it's just that I won't tell anyone.
The film does have its beauty and it condenses the film means.
A photography as a mean makes The Cry even more a film.
The Askenazy's book itself contains poetic reflections of those photos
and Jires developed this motive even more in his film.
So we get to know a life of a young couple expecting a child
and watch the man, a plumber and the woman in a maternity ward.
Through their simple story we absorb the atmosphere of that time.
I'll turn that Bach of yours on.
Ivana, you're scared again.
Come on.
Listen and stop worrying.
In one day when his wife is to give a birth
the boy encounters different people
who represent specific attitudes toward life, or life values
and the main question is whether it makes any sense
to bring children into this world.
That's the basic Askenazyian question of this film.
Kids, this is a bomb alert.
Let's go, now quietly line up by the door
and we'll run down into a bomb shelter.
As if we played a hide and seek but you mustn't shout now.
We'll hide in a cellar and not even the biggest bomb will find us there.
I like some of the films also
because they perfectly reflect Prague in those times, as a locality.
I think that The Cry lets us guess where the shooting took place
and it records those times in a not very flattering way,
its ineptitude and ugliness. But it was a part of life.
Barrandov professionals weren't very fond of us, FAMU students.
But soon we learned the ropes and started to help each other.
The set for The Cry was built up in Perla.
I was an assistant director,
Ondricek was in charge of panning for director of photography Kucera.
But in that time Forman bought himself a camera for Audition
and Ondricek was his cameraman.
Our deal was they'd be shooting Audition in Semafor theatre
and when we need to do some panning at our set,
because Kucera hated panning, he was more into static shots,
we'd come and get Ondricek.
So I ran as far as to Semafor: Boys, stop shooting, Mirek, come.
And as we were running back
I'd explain him the scene we was about to shoot.
We got to the fifth floor, he sat on a chair and said:
"I know everything. Ready."
Hello? Listen, this is no telephone exchange.
You never answered our calls.
It's a girl. 1,7 ft, 7,7 lbs.
Hello.
The Cry was pretty successful,
even the regime accepted it as a film which expresses
a communist ideology and a vital optimism
and it made Jires turn to documentaries until 1968.
He made a feature film The Joke
where he moved his stylistics to a higher level
and the social theme appeared in an even edgier form.
When you open your eyes for the very fist time
it seems as if you knew everything. And then you start forgetting.
Don't wash the dishes. And eat the strawberries.
Or wash the dishes. And let the strawberries be.
We'll put them next to our bed and pretend to be reading.
Joseph Kilian belongs to the second line of films made in the 60's.
One line were verist films striving for authenticity, documentary-like.
The second parallel line was based on a stylized reality, on a parable.
Joseph Kilian belongs to this line,
followed by films like Daisies or Fruit of Paradise.
Joseph Kilian is a unique parable
about the totality in the 60's in our country.
Many call it a Kafkaesque film, or a film with a Kafkaesque feel,
an atmosphere known from Kafka's novels,
and it is very true, mainly thanks to Schmidt's contribution.
The film is authoritative in a sense of its message
about a man who got trapped.
Excuse me, I'm looking for comrade Kilian.
- Who? - Kilian.
You know any Kilian guy?
Why?
Do you know him?
I've just come to tell him that somebody has died.
The wonderful thing is that all the absurdities depicted,
they all come from the real life.
There is nothing you couldn't actually experience in the 60's.
So the film is no abstract Kafkaesque construct
but a real living substance. And it makes the film alive.
Hello.
- Excuse me, could I rent a cat? - What kind?
Well... Let's say that one.
Pavel would be late for shooting.
He'd find it hard to get up before 9am.
So I'd start shooting with Curik
but we'd wait with the important stuff for Juracek to arrive.
He could never express himself as of what exactly he wants to do
and was clueless when it came to size of shot, editing, etc.
His way of thinking was very complicated
but as we got to the narrative level, things got much easier.
Hello, excuse me, I'm looking for a cat rental store.
A cat rental? Hang on, it rings a bell... I'm not sure now...
- I'm new here and yesterday... - Let me think, I'll tell you.
Jan Curik was a director of photography
and we got quite enchanted by long objectives
Karel Vasicek was wandering through the streets with the cat
and we were shooting the scene with hidden cameras
so all the reactions of the people he met were real, no script.
We knew the question he'd ask but not their answers
and we didn't know what he could provoke them to.
- We're looking for a cat rental. - Guys, is this a joke?
Willie Bukovy composed the score
but we didn't discuss too many things with Pavel here.
He'd say: Now there will be kids, soldiers and a funeral procession
and it will make us a story. But it's not as easy as it seems.
Curik did a great job here with the light on the street
but the sun was there for like 15 minutes and was gone.
I don't think it's right to speak about Kafkesque influence,
the film expresses his inner demons and tries to capture
the absurdity of that time and the fading spirit of Stalinism.
That monstrous monument of Stalin was standing over Prague in 1962
and its explosion is captured at the end of this film.
Beginning of the 60's is still shielded by the fading Stalinism
and this film expresses the stale atmosphere of absurdity
and combines it with things like folklore and similar stuff.
Who?
Kilian?
There is no one here.
It is quite interesting how slowly and carefully
the modern times are getting to some self-reflection.
Schorm's Courage for Every Day was facing many obstacles
because even though the 60's were considered liberal years
the power structures had been already established.
He's some student who flunked out and also a magician or something.
We don't need people like him. But he has a bunch of followers.
A script to Courage for Every Day was written by Antonin Masa,
Schorm's schoolmate but unlike Schorm, Masa was a communist
and the film is about a disillusion with communism.
Schorm came from a family of an expropriated kulak
so his different view of the 50's helped the film a great deal.
The story of a communist official was enriched with a new dimension
of an existential contemplation over how past influences presence
and how to view the past from the present perspective.
- You've held many functions. - Yes.
- Which ones exactly? - Pretty much all functions.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
The theme of an inveterate Communist who realizes
that the new-born consumer society puts his ideals aside
was very attractive for all leftist intellectuals in the Western Europe
and that's what made this film famous.
But these intellectuals did not accentuate the fact
that Schorm's honest Communist becomes not only a tragic figure
but also a figure which is ridiculous and comical
and it relates to the way Schorm develops the whole story.
What is this, a show-off or some cultural interlude?
Is it forbidden?
Well it's a friendship game.
- What game? - A friendship game.
You don't know it?
You wanna give it a go? A friendship game?
Evald Schorm was a student of Otakar Vavra from whom
he learnt basic rules of directing
but he also brought in a very special way of working with actors
and many remember him being a demiurge who never directed,
he'd just say: You know the best what to do, better than I do.
And the actors managed to fulfill his visions intuitively.
Brejchova was a huge star, a beautiful popular actress
when I, a nobody from Ostrava, came to shooting in Teplice.
He said: "Honzik, do you know Mrs Brejchova?" I said: "No."
So he introduced us and she looked at me suspiciously and he went:
So let's get to your bed scene.
Honzik, you're naked and Janinka too, everyone leaves the set now.
I'm staring at this sexy Brejchova
and I'm wearing these tiny shorts so I jumped under a blanket,
Brejchova went to a bathroom
she soaped herself up to hide her face, and action!
She jumped at me, started stroking me with those soapy hands,
biting, scratching, for real! I had no time to act shy.
It was to look for real and Evald was absolutely excited.
I was totally confused and unprepared but he didn't mind.
That's how he made me feel to be a part of the whole project.
Who's got this started, huh?
It was one of few things he told me about Courage.
That Jarda character should be a stranger there. A kind of.
We even discussed the book which fascinated me,
about a mother on a death bed
and him sitting next to her body watching flies flying around her.
And he imagines people who will never understand spitting on him.
This feeling of estrangement.
The Courage had contained a motif from Kafka but they banned it.
A vulture pecking at my feet, shoes and socks torn into pieces.
I wanted to read the script with feeling, to draw the story
but he said: No, I don't want to illustrate it in any way,
I just want you to feel desperate just like back there, on the rock.
It was a long shooting and I learnt a lot about acting there.
- What would you like? - I don't know.
My door is always open for you.
- What did they want from you? - To promote me.
You don't want to know more?
And there is the end when he gets beaten to the pulp in a pub,
those guys were great stuntmen who were pounding at me for real
but never hurt me.
He said: "Now you'll fall down and crawl away and stuff."
We didn't rehearse much, only discussed things.
So here I was, all beaten up
but self-confident as for my acting skills, suffering perfectly
when I hear Evald saying:
Smile, Honzik, smile, it all has gotten to him now, he knows
and he is laughing at it now, it's all gone, it's all far away.
And I got stiff and did exactly what he wanted me to do
and it's there, this moment.
So he could see more than just the routine, he saw the reality.
Sure enough, the film was banned
and went into a distribution two years after finishing
and in 1968, I think, it received an award at Pilsen film festival.
It means that the film became a symbol of something deeper,
a reason why we still watch it.
How long haven't we eaten?
No idea. I've stopped counting I'll get something today.
You won't get anything.
Jan Nemec admired Vaclav Krska
but more than by film he was influenced by literature,
namely Faulkner.
Thus the poetics of Diamonds,
his first film which followed his school film The Loaf of Bread.
Both were based on novels by Arnost Lustig.
He attempted to make use of a stream of consciousness,
to build a reality from pieces in an associative way
and the result often resembled a surrealist vision.
The surrealism is very innovative in the context of those years
because the story of prisoners escaping from a transport
creates just a thin storyline,
the rest are visions, images from the past and the future
which make you put the pieces together and find the meaning.
It is about a behaviour of a man in a fatal situation,
about expressing inner feelings of a man who is facing death.
About ethical questions as of
whether a man in such a fatal situation has the right to kill.
The film contains all this not in a narrative sense
but emotionally, visually.
Nemec came to me when he was 22 looking like a baby boy
and said he loved my book Diamonds of the Night.
That was my story. I was supposed to kill that German woman
but I couldn't because of the child standing next to her.
I imagined the fate of Jewish girls so I wanted to hit her
but I didn't because I felt sorry for the little orphan
and it was a mistake because she reported against us
and that's how the old guys got to catch us.
Diamonds of the Night were a true story.
The film was based on a script except five key scenes.
I didn't change the script
it just originally contained this inner explaining voice
which wasn't necessary.
In the script the scene of the hunt and the nosh-up
were merely noted down as two-take scenes
but actually they became two key scenes during the shooting
when I realized their potential and made the most of them.
I think I did the right thing.
First there is a script based on a literary piece
written in a way that can be approved and financed.
Then, during the shooting you must put the script aside
and shoot something independent
but when in the editing room you have to go back to the roots
and add the new, enriching stuff
because I say that a film is made in an editing room
where all the elements merge.
This film was put together by editor Mila Hajek,
a key figure of our cinematography in the 60's.
It was a total opposite to FAMU, no discussions, talks, intentions.
He read the script, I told him what it was about and he'd go:
Alright, let's get things done.
He'd do everything himself, even the editing, worked late
and in the end Diamonds had 32 versions of its ending
and we'd quarrel over frames.
The finishing works got also complicated
because he was very inventive when working with a sound.
We'd put a microphone into Prague passages
and recorded people talking there
and it gave the film a special atmosphere.
I can't speak German.
You can call Prague police office and check.
I made a deal with director of photography Kucera
whom I considered my soul mate
because I knew the film would have three levels:
A level of reality, a level of memories, or flashbacks
and a level of dream, or fantasy.
I wanted to underline the non-realistic part
so I made the deal with Kucera
who was a master of a poetic vision, of an incommunicability.
And in the middle of the shooting Mr Kucera comes to me and says
he's done with this film and I had no clue what'd happened
and he said he was going to a film festival in Acapulco
and that it would be a long trip and he's to get some award there.
And he said he'd be back in 3 weeks
but it had to be finished by then.
I was on a very friendly terms with Mirek Ondricek back then
while with Kucera it felt pretty distant
so I said I wanted Ondricek to finish the shooting.
So Kucera left to Acapulco
and Ondricek shot the second half of the film,
including the hunt scene and the whole finale.
So I got to work with the two best cameramen for a price of one,
Kucera was in charge of the dreamy scenes, Ondricek did the realism
and it helped the film very much.
Logically, each one of the trio Forman, Passer, Papousek
might also go his own way and that's what eventually happened.
Forman stuck to his vision of "a cruel theatre - the World",
in 1968 Papousek made his film The Most Beautiful Age
and Ivan Passer made his film Intimate Lighting in 1965
a lyrical, nostalgic impression, a look back at lost illusions.
One day my phone rings and it's Vaclav Sasek saying:
Listen I've written a treatment and they don't want to buy it
because they tell me I need to get someone who'd direct it.
I've offered it to several directors to no avail.
Would you be so kind and take a look at it?
So he gave it to me, I read it
and understood why nobody wanted to film it.
Then I met Vaclav and Jarda Papousek
and we agreed on one scene- it was something with fishing-
when he recognizes his schoolmate from art school
and they talk for a while.
So we decided to make the whole film out of this single scene.
- I guess you'd prefer a leg. - I want a leg!
No talking during the meal.
Kaya, Grandpa also didn't get a leg and he doesn't complain.
Do you, Grandpa?
Leave it, no need for him to get everything he wants.
Well, he likes it. Here, have a leg.
Kaya, what are you doing? Give it back to auntie, now!
Let him have both, I can share with Peter, right?
Of course.
No way, none of you would have enough to eat. Here, have mine.
Leave it! Leave it!
Here, have mine.
No, you shouldn't, really, we can share.
- How can you share a leg? - We'll manage somehow.
Here, this is easy to share.
Intimate Lighting consists of what we actually experienced.
For example I lived in a village by a road which led to a cemetery
and five times a week I watched a funeral procession passing by.
I was always impressed by two trumpet players up on a hill
who were corresponding with the band playing by an open grave
and boys loved this image so sure enough we used it.
The same way we used Jarda's experience and so on.
One night Ivan said that each of us will put in something silly
and the other two must agree.
But I can't remember who put what in back then.
The authorities couldn't stand Ivan to make Intimate Lighting
and it got even worse when they learnt I was involved too.
Barrandov general manager Harnach said:
If cameramen approve I'll let him do it.
So we were invited to a meeting of cameramen in the Film Club
and they were voting.
I'm not sure but I think everybody voted against me.
And Strecha came and said:
Guys, do what you want to do, I care about nothing but a fee.
His attitude was fantastic.
12, 13, 14...
- Wait! - Don't give me your wait.
I said wait!
That's one hell of an exercise.
It was such a dilemma to decide whether I should cast actors
or musicians who would actually play.
I reckoned it would be easier with non-actors
who can play the instruments.
- Grandpa! - What Grandpa!
Did you see these knuckles?
What about the knuckles?
- A lumberjack could play this. - Yeah right, a lumberjack.
I've worked much harder than any lumberjack here!
I remember when I spotted him
I reached out my hand and stopped him and it was Bambas.
Petora, don't call me Bambas!
I asked him if he wanted to act in this film. And he said no.
So I met him a few times, I gave him the script. To read
and he said: This is about me.
- Care for some gooseberries? - I'd love to.
During the shooting he was always on the set,
even if it wasn't his scene.
I like to cast people
who make me wonder what secrets they hide.
There should be some more.
I remember thinking:
Maybe one day I'll have time to sit and talk with him.
And when I was editing the film, he died.
He had leucemia and nobody knew about it. Just him.
- Dadddy! Daddy! - Come here, son.
- And you won't greet me? - Dad, Kaya's peed into a tub!
After the first screening of Intimate Lighting in the Film Club
I was approached by Vladimir Valenta and he said:
This is the best of Forman.
That sentence got stuck in my mind.
Cheers to that!
Pinda, man, where are you going? Get off that thing!
Hi guys!
From the early 60's until the end of the 60'
director Kachyna and writer Jan Prochazka worked in a tandem.
At first they focused on films about young people, teenagers
and from the mid-sixties they started a brand new line
of films about taboo topics from the Czech history,
like Long Live the Republic, Carriage to Vienna and The Ear,
which ended up in the vault.
The films by Kachyna and Prochazka
Long Live the Republic, Carriage to Vienna, The Ear,
or The Nun's Night brought up very interesting topics.
In Long Live the Republic they tricked us into observing
events from the Second World War from a new point of view
but the newness of the view was given by the observer, a child.
Suddenly they could openly say
that Moravian peasants were just utilitarian egocentrics,
not partisans, and that not all Germans were murderers...
Honza! Honza, where are you?
Mum...
Kachyna uses something we saw in Nemec's or Jires's films,
an illogical editing by means of sudden associations
which can bring out emotions as they develop in a mind
of a child who imagines what could happen to him.
This adds a brand new emotional poetics to this film
and it's a shame this film got somehow lost
among others made by Prochazka and Kachyna.
It was made by two production companies, the Army Film
which was a huge coproducer,
thanks to them we could use nine planes, air-fighters, tanks.
And the other, civilian co-producer was Barrandov
and Kachyna made the most of what they could give us.
- Come on, you swine. You hear me? - On your knees, bastard.
- Can't you say please? - Just you wait!
- You rascal. Shame on you! - Look at him!
As for Prochazka's career, he was not only a film writer
but also a candidate of the communist politburo
and a personal friend of president Antonin Novotny.
As the head of one of Barrandov production groups he and Fikar
opened a space for the new generation of young filmmakers
This activity resulted in a quick end of his professional career
after the events in August 1968.
He literally died of the hunt that was launched for him,
however in the 70's and even in the 90's his scripts were filmed
but in the 70's they had to be signed by somebody else.
The screening of Long Live the Republic at a festival in Moscow
in the 60's caused an outrage
because of the way it depicted Soviet liberators in 1945.
As a result this film was later removed from a distribution list
and ended up in the vault for the next 20 years.
Shut up, you drunkards, look here! Here at the monument of peace.
It's beautiful, huge and it's ours. Like a holy portrait with a halo.
Kadar and Klos created a unique tandem of directors.
Their new era began in 1963 with Death Is Called Engelchen,
followed by Accused and in 1965 they made The Shop on Main Street
based on a novel by Ladislav Grosman
which gained a huge publicity and got to be presented abroad.
Their cooperation actually reached its peak with this film.
You and your joinery antichrist, you premature maggot...
Had you joined the Guard I could have become something!
Leave me alone. I was accused of being a buck-passer because of you.
You Ali Baba. Screw your garden! And your farm.
Another song is in today, you joinery Jesus.
Just look what kind of a brother-in-law you have.
Here! Here! It's time for you to realize who Kolkovski is.
It was the first Kadar's film about the Second World War.
Shortly after his immigration
he got involved with historic topics even more.
This was the first film in which he touched his own experience.
He spent four years in a labor camp in Hungary, his parents
and his sister with children ended up in a concentration camp.
So this was the first time he decided to talk about it.
There Kadar proved that he was not just an excellent filmmaker
but also an exceptional human because of how he depicted those
who had always been considered guilty monsters, aryanizers.
He made this aryanizer his main character
who is difficult to be judged as a swine who did nasty things.
I thought I'd lost it.
Could you excuse me, young man, I find it hard to read
Really? Well, I've been appointed an aryanizer of your business.
- Excuse me? - Of your business.
Oh, the buttons!
The whole tragicomedy is actually more comic than tragic.
The tragedy lies in the almost unsaid background
of the Slovak state and deportation of Jews
while the first plan is actually comic, uneasy and deeply human.
The character of Tono Brtko thinks
that finally he'll satisfy his wife and bring her home some money
but he fails because the Jewish shop makes no money at all.
Here. You think the better Jewish shops weren't taken by the nobs?
You've been tricked, mate.
Kolkotsky threw you a bone, a dry, gnawed bone.
The aryanizer is paid by Jewish community to be there,
to be kind to Mrs Lautmann.
The inhumanity of the regime does not get to show in the fact
that it made Tono Brtko an aryanizer but in the way
it frames the whole absurd story.
Mr Brtko, I wanted to tell you about our good will to oblige you.
We understand your position is also not very enviable...
Mr Brtko is a very nice man,
he understands the financial difficulties our commune is in.
We voted through your support, or let's say a regular income.
Trust us, we trust you.
Once I went to the editorial office in Maiselova street
and on the stairs I passed a man and a woman.
The lady said: I'm waiting for you, my name is Ida Kaminska,
I am director of The Jewish Theatre in Warsaw and need a film role.
So I went to Kadar and told him:
Listen, do you have a film role for a Jewish actress from Warsaw?
And he said: I'm looking for an actress who doesn't speak Slovak
but still is comprehensible.
You won't be persecuted just for being Jewish. A law is a law.
A law. What can we do, it's a law.
- A philanthropic law. - But I still don't understand.
At the first rehearsal she started playing a heroine as always.
And Kadar said: You're no heroine here, remember,
you're an old senile Jewish lady in the Eastern Slovakia.
She had to speak the Eastern- Slovakian dialect, not Polish.
I myself come from that region
so every morning I practiced with Mrs Kaminska
teaching her to speak Polish- Jewish-Eastern-Slovakian.
For God's sake, Mrs Lautmann, Kolkotsky is coming. Hide yourself.
- We've got to close the shop. - Forget about the shop.
I knew he would come. Go hide yourself, for God's sake. Go away!
Let go! You are crazy!
The Shop on Main Street eventually received an Academy Award,
it was a huge success not only for the film and its makers
but it had an impact on our cinematography
because the whole world turned to the Czechoslovakian films
and our filmmakers had a good reason to demand more space
for their creativity.
Directors Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos
brought home one of the world's most important film awards,
a golden statuette of Oscar, for The Shop on Main Street.
The golden Oscar has been resting the whole way back from the USA
wrapped in Kadar's pajamas.
Otakar Vavra was a teacher of some of the New Wave directors
like Jiri Menzel, Vera Chytilova, Evald Schorm, Jan Schmidt.
Vavra himself was an autodidact
and still he managed to teach the next generation the skills
and at the same time to absorb their innovations.
We can see it in the way
his films based on Hrubin's work were developing.
August Sunday is quite simple, it has no emotional impact.
Then suddenly in Golden Queen
we watch a story of a 50-year-old man who experienced the 50's.
Vavra's personal topic made the film truly impressive.
It again presents an ambivalent view of the main character.
And then comes Romance for Bugle, Vavra's top film of the 60's.
And you call yourself a man?
- Heading for some grass, Tonka? - For nettles.
Stop fooling around.
Home, we've got to go home.
Romance for Bugle is originally a disintegrated poem
and we connected the pieces into the most successful story.
We'll go to America. We'll go to Minjapur.
We're waiting only for you.
You're quite late today. Shall I give you a lift?
Why not.
I hold this film in high regard because there are awesome things.
The grandpa who speaks to dead people came about thanks to Barla,
a young cameraman who did things which no professional dared to do.
It was him who made the shots of the man blending with nature
and the buzzing of dragonflies.
No other cameraman would have done something like that.
I even had some of the props brought out onto locations
so we could light them properly.
I've saved some money but I've got it at home, on my bank book.
I can wait.
I spread out a polythene sheet to create some indirect light
and I couldn't do this on location because the Sun keeps moving.
Get up, I'll help you into a coat.
It's nice of you. I give as good as I get.
We were shooting the bathing scene on October 5 because in summer
the Sazava river was dried out so we had to wait for some water.
We even considered going to Yugoslavia, or somewhere far away.
The film was complete except one scene of summer bathing.
And it was October. It rained, the water level raised
and so we shot the scene.
Mr Vavra responsibly arranged real carnies
and discussed every single detail with those people.
Back then carousels would be sent spinning by children
and as a reward kids could get a ride for free or a candy or so.
In another scene Kvietik casts shotgun shells.
We are not aware of these things anymore, we go and buy the shells
but he'd make them with his own hands.
Give me another gun.
He gave me the script and discussed it with me.
And when it came to casting actors, he gave me carte blanche.
I came to Bratislava to cast Zuzana Ciganova.
But I'd actually found the people I dragged there in a circus.
I found the grinder-guy in Cheb, the father of Zuzka's character.
And he just accepted those people as well as me and it was nice.
I'm sick of waiting. On the next stop there'll be a priest.
She won't run away. The authorities must fake her official age anyway.
Do it when the winter's over and there's less work here.
Don't worry, I'll arrange it.
I've told you she'll be yours.
I was totally authoritative
because while writing the script I visualized the result.
Directing meant fitting the resisting reality into that image
which I had created in my mind.
That's what directing was about. Fitting things into my image.
Raping them. So I had to be authoritative.
Terina, Terka! Terka!
Vera Chytilova smartly perceived
questions of public and personal morality
on which she based all her films, from Ceiling to A Bagful of Fleas.
All these films explore personal as well as public morality.
Daisies is one of them
although this film bewitches us with its experimental motion,
and the interplay between Kucera's camera and Krumbachova's art design
- I'm no good in this either. - What are we good at then?
We're no good.
- What are you doing? - A virgin.
Don't I look like a virgin? I am a virgin.
I was eager to go for any experiments.
With my latter husband Kucera
we started to write a script for a film Daisies
and we searched for a topic
which would allow us to make the most of film language.
We knew a film should express what no other language can.
Film was put aside
and it was all about some photographed theatre
and we wanted to act upon a viewer more artistically.
You should have been here yesterday, girls, it was fun.
Oh well, one can't be on two places at the same time.
We're just always so busy.
So, what do you say?
Then we met Ester Krumbachova who had her dreams and ideas.
We were just three strangers who got along great at work.
We enjoyed giving space to each other with no limits
and making sure things were clear for ordinary people.
Who will pay for that?
Carcass - fartass.
Originally I wanted to capture a lifestyle of school girls
who want to have fun but they don't know how so they're bored
who look good and have a sense of humour
and they're reaching out to touch their existence
being destroyed by some values.
Kucera was a natural-born artist, trying things at home,
I saw him projecting pictures of plants on a face of a statue
or he'd make collages, cutting things out of newspapers,
gluing them together and stuff.
I thought: It's a shame, this Art for art's sake,
this destruction should be expressed and underlined
to make sense of the language.
We stressed the confrontation
of something aesthetic and nice and a destruction it brings
which doesn't work without a spirit.
We're burning!
One thing can be positive and negative at the same time.
It depends on a viewpoint.
There's always birth in the beginning and death in the end.
What happens inbetween? Just fun or something more?
What is it about if it's all about nothing?
In the USA, in Lincoln Centre,
it was the first Week of the Czechoslovakian Cinematography
and I met Andy Warhol, we went to The Factory
and they were amazed to see that Daisies had an actual script.
That the dialogues had been actually written down.
- Do you have snails? - No, but- - Not to mention hares, right?
- They have venison, miss. - No, that's too big.
I'm hungry for something small.
Bring me the chicken then. Is it big enough?
I don't care about some confused improvisation
which doesn't make any sense.
You have to concentrate on what you want to present.
It's a must, to tell not just a story
but a meaningful story.
Freedom is the most important part of the process,
things are changing, developing and I am changing too.
Sometimes no ideas come up.
Then I go and check my script, but it's the last thing I do.
Julie! Now I know what love is.
I don't want this moment to end.
Don't be so mean to me.
You make my life a misery.
It is quite remarkable
that this film which bewitches you with its form
became a subject of a parliament interpellation
when MP Pruzinec called it a waste meaning even a waste of food.
Of course it was a nonsense cinematographically
but sure enough it aggravated the whole political suite.
Behind its playful façade it poses very serious questions,
it is a parable about whether we can ever reconstruct reality
which we ourselves destroyed.
Perhaps it was the message of those final scenes
that made Communists so angry.
But we actually are happy.
But that's ok.
Milos Hrma reports to the station master.
Welcome, Milos. At ease.
Your dad was the best engine driver in our region.
Once he threw a stoker out of a moving train.
Menzel's film debut was a story in Pearls of the Deep,
other stories were filmed by some of the New Wave directors
like Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilova, Evald Schorm, Jaromil Jires.
Hrabal probably attracted this generation by his skewness
with the whole culture.
Hrabal actually represented underground of the 50's
and his authenticity and variety of topics were very inspiring.
His short novel Closely Watched Trains was Menzel's destiny.
After The Shop on Main Street
this was internationally the most successful Czechoslovakian film.
Mr Novak, I did think you'd actually make it, you know?
I'd read an excerpt of Trains in a newspaper,
the part when Zdenicka Svata describes what Mr Hubicka
had been doing to her.
I remember being turned on as I was reading this part.
It was so beautifully erotic I immediately knew I'd do it.
This book lacks a straight storyline.
Hrabal somehow cut the story into pieces and mixed them,
more or less intuitively.
There's not much logic in those flashbacks.
I knew the story was obvious if told chronologically.
I knew from Vavra that a story must be dismantled
and put together again in a different composition.
Because a drama composition is different than an epic one.
So I was searching for the dramatic tone
and the dismantling worked beautifully.
Eventually there were two lines going against each other.
Investigation of Zdenicka and arrival of train with ammunition.
The successful intersection was actually inadvertent.
For the leading role I wanted Pucholt.
He was already doing another film with Krejcik and refused.
He was a dutiful person but I wanted him as a famous name.
But Pucholt lacked the inner pain which Vaclav had.
He was perfect as a sufferer.
For the role of Zdenicka I wanted Janzurova.
But she was too shy.
She's a great actress but Zdenicka was more innocent.
I loved Hrusinsky and I wanted him to play dispatcher Hubicka
but he was engaged in Weiss's film so I went to my friend,
Josef Somr who'd played only a minor role in Accused
and he was just awesome. I was so lucky to find him.
Let me tell you a funny story with the role of station master
who was played by scriptwriter Vladimir Valenta, a non-actor.
He looked like father of my schoolmate, a chubby fellow,
a Philippe Noiret type.
Valenta was visually perfect though he'd never acted before.
Luck brought me to another person I've always loved,
Vlastimil Brodsky.
I knew I had to cast someone nice to the only negative part
because traitors never look like traitors.
Doctor Brabec says I suffer from ejaculatio praecox.
Come on, Milos.
See? Right now I am a man.
And then the tonality of picture,
I'd practiced it in Kachyna's Long Live the Republic so I knew
that lighting the small station can be done very realistically
by imitating those railroad lamps
and green shades which create sharp shadows on the walls.
These things helped me support the atmosphere,
now I was able to shoot a moving night train
sending sparkles out of its engine funnel,
or to imitate a small oil lamp during the erotic scene.
I've known it all my life.
I tend to avoid unpleasant things,
fortunately or unfortunately.
But I knew letting Milos die on screen would ruin the film.
It would disrupt the sense of tragedy and ridicule,
the sadness would prevail and it would ruin catharsis.
I decided not to show Milos's death
only a cloud of smoke.
What made Americans like Closely Watched Trains?
I also wonder what it was. It is made for Czech audience.
But I'm glad they liked it.
And I'd love this film to bring Mr Hrabal closer to them
because he deserves to be universally acknowledged.
We didn't get to know about it here, Kadar received the award.
Sure it was good that Czech film was acknowledged abroad,
in France and Germany, later it went even to the USA.
The film is good but so are many others.
It was just lucky enough to have been bought by Italians
who sold it to America.
But the Oscar came about by a pure chance as well.
But then the tanks arrived
and our older colleagues gave us all hell.
Thanks to Oscar I was the first to be banned from film making.