Why is Czech cinema so unfailingly great?

I just finished writing this, when I got an email about a Jiří Menzel retrospective starting next week in my town - maybe I should negociate a night off from baby duties to go and see something - Closely Watched Trains? Or anything less obvious?

'valerie' is incredible. probably my single favorite film title, too.

if you're intending to go and see La belle et la Bete at some point, xyzzzz__, let me know - wd quite like to catch it as well.

Oh hi Fizzles I went on Saturday, would've enjoyed to see it w/you.

Certainly go and catch it, think you still got a couple of weeks for that.

Would love to getthis (box set of 22 CZ films 1960-1970.

RIP Jan Nemec: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/czech-filmmaker-jan-nemec-dies-79-37772453

Damn, the Party and the Guests is so great.

Yes it is.

:-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PyL-F4n5o

Out of the New Wave ones I've seen, I think I like The Joke best of all. It's both pretty unflinching about the horrors of Stalinism but also makes its protagonist such a grouchy, unlikeable jerk and his plot to get revenge so petty that it prevents the film from becoming sentimental or propagandistic about it. That scene where an old friend tells him "I got expelled too, and I didn't turn out like you, your problem is you just hate people" is so funny and relateable.

What little I've read of Kundera's subsequent prose makes me suspect he got up his own arse very quickly but here the sex comedy stuff really works, imo.

I don't remember seeing Forman's Loves of a Blonde before. Near-great comedy about getting laid and the inevitable postcoital letdown.

Big favourite of Ken Loach's

most of these never show in NY, let alone the USA

https://www.bam.org/film/2019/the-anarchic-cinema-of-vera-chytilova

There was a smaller Ester Krumbachová season and exhibition at the CCA in Glasgow at the start of the year, with some nice pieces from Krumbachová's archive. Excuse the indulgence, but here a couple of pictures I took:

https://beta-static.photobucket.com/images/aa362/Andrew_Littlefield/0/47932813-dd59-448e-a1c8-be28bafed37e-original.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds
https://beta-static.photobucket.com/images/aa362/Andrew_Littlefield/0/7dcdaecd-7491-48f8-8f2f-55ddce43bd46-original.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds

Some of the Chytilovas have made it onto disc from the excellent Second Run label, but there are definitely some tantalizing obscurities in that bam season. You will have to go to them all on our behalf, Dr M.

goings-on

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6340-the-czechoslovak-new-wave-rolls-on

Anyone ever seen the HBO film Stalin that Ivan Passer did with Robert Duvall?

His NYT obit today ends describing the 1991 wrap party... in MOSCOW... during which news of the dissolution of the Soviet Union came.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6770-from-intimate-lighting-to-cutter-s-way-ivan-passer