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Bastion Promenade Seventy Four 1974
Screens at ACMI, 8:45pm Wednesday 21 December as part of the season Genre Nonconformity and East Side Stories: Decentring the Musical Part I
This lively parody, both kitsch and caustic, takes aim at the paternalistic rule of János Kádár as two zany librettists attempt to cast their new operetta. Against the drab background of communist regulation, the intermittent hues of bubble gum pink lighting and social resistance, Gazdag creates a work of surrealist cinematic dissent. Praised as one of the…
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Green Gold 1964
Screens at ACMI, 7pm Wednesday 21 December as part of the season Genre Nonconformity and East Side Stories: Decentring the Musical Part I
Rychman expanded upon his experience making proto-video clips when bringing to the big screen the first great Czechoslovak musical, a Romeo and Juliet-like tale of teen love often dubbed “East Side Story”. Framed by a trio of guitarists acting as a Greek chorus, this sly satire of the socialist-realist “tractor musical” dramatises the conflict between collective and…
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A Drama of Jealousy (and Other Things) 1970
Screens on 35mm at ACMI, 9:15pm Wednesday 1 June as part of the season Facing Modernity: A Tribute to Monica Vitti
In one of her greatest comedic performances, Vitti is Adelaide, a florist in a less-than-picturesque Rome enmeshed in a turbulent, farcical relationship with both Marcello Mastroianni’s adulterous communist bricklayer (a Cannes Best Actor-winning turn) and Giancarlo Giannini’s woebegone young pizzaiolo (hence the film’s international title, The Pizza Triangle). Co-writer and director Scola here infuses the commedia all’italiana with bitter irony and fourth wall-breaking formal sophistication; the cinematography is by the great Carlo Di Palma.
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Birds, Orphans and Fools 1969
Screens at ACMI, 7pm Wednesday 5 October as part of the season Gallows Bacchanalias, Fractious Fairy-Tales and the Rule of Three: The Cinema of Juraj Jakubisko
Co-presented by the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia
Shot under highly straitened circumstances, and featuring astonishing cinematography from Igor Luther and a score by the great Zdeněk Liška, Jakubisko’s third feature, written with Karel Sidon (latterly the Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic), is a mosaic-like parable set in an undefined space…
