Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless directors—including Miloš Forman (THE FIREMEN’S BALL), Vera Chytilová (DAISIES), Jiří Menzel (CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS), Jaromil Jireš (VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS), Jan Němec (A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND GUESTS), and Juraj Herz (THE CREMATOR)—risked censorship and began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state. Ranging in style from the dazzlingly experimental to the arrestingly realistic, these revolutionary transmissions from a singular time and place stand as models of art as a tool of political resistance.
Programmer and critic Irena Kovarova, directors Miloš Forman and Jan Němec, and film professor Peter Hames discuss one of the most radical film movements of the 1960s.
Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1960 • Czechoslovakia
This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.
Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1960 • Czechoslovakia
This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
The debut feature from Věra Chytilová interweaves two stories simultaneously: one a narrative about a frustrated mother (Vera Uzelacová) discontented with the drudgery of housework, the other a quasi documentary about a gymnast (real-life Olympi...
Directed by Evald Schorm • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Director Evald Schorm reflects on the changing political tides of his generation in this clear-eyed study of idealism and disillusionment. Jarda (Jan Kačer) is a passionate Communist worker fervently dedicated to the principles of his party. But a...
Directed by Jan Němec • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ladislav Janský, Antonín Kumbera
With this simultaneously harrowing and lyrical debut feature, Jan Němec established himself as the most uncompromising visionary among the radical filmmakers who made up the Czechoslovak New Wave. Adapted fro...
Directed by Miloš Forman • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ladislav Jakim, Pavla Martínková, Jan Vostrčil
One of the first films to herald the arrival of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Miloš Forman’s stylistically inventive debut narrative feature follows the bumbling teenager of the title (Ladislav ...
Directed by Miloš Forman • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Vladimíra Pucholta, Vladimír Menšik, Ivan Kheil
With sixteen women to each man, the odds are against Andula in her desperate search for love—that is, until a rakish piano player visits her small factory town and temporarily eases her long...
Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Idá Kaminská, Josef Kroner, František Zvarík
An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and traged...
Directed by Ivan Passer • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Zdenek Bezusek, Karel Blazek, Vera Kresadlová
One of the most beloved films of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this digressive, easygoing slice of life takes place over the course of a weekend in a provincial town where a musician returns, alon...
Directed by Juraj Herz • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
In his debut film, Juraj Herz adapts Bohumil Hrabal's story about a man who works in a junk shop.
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Maybe the New Wave's most anarchic entry, Vera Chytilovà's absurdist farce follows the misadventures of two brash young women. Believing the world to be "spoiled," they embark on a series of pranks in which nothing, food, clothes, men, war, is...
Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Václav Neckář, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds h...
Directed by Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression offered by the movement's versatile directors.
Directed by Jan Němec • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
In Jan Němec's surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an inter...
Directed by Evald Schorm • 1967 • Czechoslovakia
Evald Schorm was one of the most politically outspoken of the Czech New Wave filmmakers. This raw psychological drama about an engineer unable to adjust to the world around him following his suicide attempt is at heart a scathing portrait of socia...
Directed by Miloš Forman • 1967 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Jan Vostrcil, Josef Šebánek, František Reinstein
A milestone of the Czech New Wave, Miloš Forman’s first color film THE FIREMEN’S BALL is both a dazzling comedy and a provocative political satire. A hilarious saga of good intentions confo...
Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1968 • Czechoslovakia
Two years after his worldwide hit CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, Jiří Menzel directed this amusing idyll about three middle-aged men whose mellow summer is interrupted by the arrival of a circus performer and his beautiful assistant. A meditation on agi...
Directed by Ivan Passer • 1968 • Czechoslovakia
Patrons of a bar interact on a summer Sunday afternoon.
Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1969 • Czechoslovakia
Jaromil Jireš's brilliant adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel tells the fragmentary tale of a man expelled from the Communist Party because of a political joke. After "rehabilitation" in the mines and a stint in prison, he hatches a revenge plot...
Directed by Juraj Herz • 1969 • Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovak New Wave iconoclast Juraj Herz’s terrifying, darkly comic vision of the horrors of totalitarian ideologies stars a supremely chilling Rudolf Hrušínský as the pathologically morbid Karel Kopfrkingl, a crematorium manager in 1930s Prague ...
Directed by Vojtěch Jasný • 1969 • Czechoslovakia
Vojtěch Jasný won the best director award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival for this sweeping portrait of a small Czech village between the years of 1945 and 1958, during which the residents go from hopeful in the aftermath of the defeat of the Na...
Directed by Karel Kachyňa • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
This paranoid surveillance thriller unfolds over the course of a tense, turbulent night in the life of Ludvík (Radoslav Brzobohatý), a Communist party official, and his wife Anna (Jiřina Bohdalová). Returning home from a party one evening, the pa...
