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 against the former friend who betrayed him. Made near the end of the Czech New Wave, The Joke is acknowledged as one of its greatest works.
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 Jean-Luc Godard • 1967 • France
This scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard is one of cinema's great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while civilization crashes and burns aro...
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1968 • Sweden
Directed by Ingmar Bergman, SHAME (Skammen) is at once an examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as musicians living in quiet retreat o...
