Short Film – Czech Film Review

A Bagful of Fleas (Pytel blech) – Věra Chytilová, 1962

Perhaps more than any other film of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Věra Chytilová’s anarchic Daisies has transcended its origins and become an arthouse darling. The Criterion Collection hails it as “one of the great works of feminist cinema” and it is only one of two Czech movies to make the exalted Sight and Sound Top 250, the other being Marketa Lazarova. Over 50 years later, it still attracts attention from modern film buffs thanks to its absurd humour, zeitgeisty vibe and abundance of sixties style.

Chytilová made many other films, including the popular comedy The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday, but Daisies remains her most famous work. Sometimes when a director is so closely associated with one film it is fun to look back at their earlier catalogue to see how their style developed. With this in mind, I thought I’d check out her second short feature, A Bagful of Fleas…

Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně) – Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová and Jaromil Jireš, 1966

A subtitle for this anthology of short films based on the stories of Bohumil Hrabal may as well be “The Czechoslovak New Wave in a Nutshell”, as it showcases the work of five of the movement’s then up-and-coming directorial stars: Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová and Jaromil Jireš. While the garrulous voice of the author comes through loud and clear in all segments, each director uses their tale as a framework for their burgeoning filmmaking talents.

First up is Menzel, who was the only one of the five who didn’t already have a full feature under his belt, but would go on to have a rewarding long-standing collaboration with Hrabal with films such as Closely Watched Trains, Cutting it Short and I Served the King of England. In The Death of Mr Baltazar, we follow three ageing petrolheads to a day at the Moto GP in their vintage 1931 Walter Convertible, a rickety old jalopy still capable of transporting six butchers and a bed. While the crowd wait for the race to start, they trade stories with another elderly spectator about all the horrific accidents they have witnessed. It’s almost as if they watch the sport to see which rider will come a cropper next and, sure enough, the day’s race adds another fatality to their highlight reel.

Joseph Kilian (Postava k podpírání) – Pavel Juráček and Jan Schmidt, 1963

Sometimes a film just doesn’t grab me at all and then I’m sat looking at a blank document thinking, “I don’t know if I can be bothered to write anything about this”. It is extra frustrating when I can see the film’s qualities, but feel so neutral towards it that I struggle to muster any enthusiasm.

One such film is Juráček & Schmidt’s Joseph Kilian, a paranoid short drama from the Czechoslovak New Wave. Knowing that the review is going to be a battle, I face a dilemma. Do I –

a) Give up on the movie and watch something else, then maybe come back another time when a change of mood or circumstances might make it chime differently.

b) Plough ahead regardless and eke out 700-800 words on it, going through the motions and stating the obvious, like the clear influence of Franz Kafka and blah blah blah.

c) Find a hook, a way to approach the film that will entertain me and, in turn, hopefully make the article more entertaining for the reader. My first instinct with Joseph Kilian is to go with option C, but what is the hook?

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Indie Profiles: Nora Štrbová, director of S P A C E S (M E Z E R Y)

Nora Strbova

Of all the terrific entries on display recently at the 61st BRNO16 International Short Film Festival, Nora Štrbová’s S P A C E S was perhaps the most moving. In just seven minutes, the animated documentary explores memory from the perspective of her brother, who suffered a rare neurological disorder before his untimely death in his twenties. With a minimalist, hand-crafted style that evokes the glitching memory of its central character, S P A C E S is a poignant blend of artistic medium and heartfelt subject matter.

I spoke to Nora about S P A C E S and her experiences as a filmmaker with my friend Tomáš Hůsek, who helped translate the conversation…

…

LA & TH: This is clearly a labour of love about a very personal subject, as you directed, wrote, animated and created the art design for the film. What made you choose this style to tell the story?

NS: Well, at the beginning when I was thinking about what the movie is going to be, the idea about the subject matter came to me. The entire style of the film is derived from that original concept. It is a very personal story about my brother who lost his memory because of the brain tumour that eventually caused his death. I wanted to try… after I was no longer able to ask him about it… try to imagine how he might perceive the world without memory, what does it mean to live without memory, and also think about what memory actually is.

I started reading articles, books, stories – both fiction and non-fiction – poetry, everything. From this, I put together a sort of mosaic and the style of the film, which is mosaic-like, actually reflects that. It felt fitting to choose a kaleidoscopic form to show how the human mind and memory works. The more I analysed how memory behaves, the more I found out that it is mostly fragments, even in healthy individuals. It is just fragments saved into memory. Sometimes just emotions or sensations that we once felt during situations rather than the situations themselves – colours, smells, textures etc. So I wanted to create that feeling for the viewer… Continue reading “Indie Profiles: Nora Štrbová, director of S P A C E S (M E Z E R Y)”

Dimensions of Dialogue (Možnosti dialogu) – Jan Švankmajer, 1983

Dimensions of Dialogue Eternal Conversation

Reader, I screwed up. It was deadline day for my latest review and I was up against it, having just moved into an old house in the countryside. The place doesn’t have a working kitchen, bathroom or heating system. As I type this, I’m pressed against an oil radiator wearing four layers of clothing and a blanket wrapped around me. In desperation, I reached for a movie to review on Netflix. Only when I got to the end did I realise that it was a Slovak film.

Perhaps the cold has got to my senses. While I don’t speak Czech, I have lived in the country long enough to tell the difference between the Czech language and Slovak. But not on this occasion…

Luckily my good friend and former writing partner sent me a short film some time ago which I’ve been meaning to watch. It is Dimensions of Dialogue by legendary surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer. It is only 14 minutes long so you can watch it in your lunchbreak and it will give you far more food for thought than the 90 minutes of romantic comedy dross I sat through earlier…

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