To celebrate the life and work of the late director Jiří Menzel, best known for his quietly subversive 1966 Oscar-winning comedy Closely Observed Trains, the Czech Centre London and Second Run present another of Menzel’s outstanding adaptations of a literary work by Bohumil Hrabal, a newly restored Cutting it Short (1980) and an epic new documentary love letter to Czech cinema – CzechMate, In Search of Jiří Menzel (2020).
CUTTING IT SHORT
The film will be available to rent for £4.99 (UK only) via THIS LINK on Czech Centre London Vimeo on Demand
from 10 am on Sunday 26 October 2020 GMT till 10 am on Sunday 1 November 2020 GMT
REGISTER TO GET AN EMAIL REMINDER WHEN THE FILM BECOMES AVAILABLE
Director: Jiří Menzel
Czechoslovakia, 1980, 93′, English subtitles
Cast: Magda Vašáryová, Jiří Schmitzer, Jaromír Hanzlík and Rudolf Hrušinský
A much loved piece of classic Czech cinema tells a delightful comic story based on the work of Bohumil Hrabal, in which Menzel and Hrabal recreated the 1920s world of Hrabal’s childhood in the Nymburk brewery. The peaceful family harmony provided by the balance between Maryška, his charming, outgoing and emancipated mother and Francin, his earnest but shy and reserved father is shattered by the unexpected arrival of eccentric uncle Pepin, a loud storyteller and globetrotter. Look out for many memorable set pieces such as the cutting of Maryška’s magnificently long hair to the dismay of the male population of the town, her subsequent public punishment and a chimney climbing scene straight from the Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton playbook. A pure delight, it is a lyrical film evoking childhood memories and full of ridiculous situations, quirky humour and attractive looking beer
CZECHMATE – IN SEARCH OF JIŘÍ MENZEL
The film will be available to rent for £4.99 via Second Run Vimeo on Demand (UK and Ireland only)
from 10 am on Sunday 26 October 2020 GMT till 10 am on Sunday 1 November 2020 GMT
REGISTER TO GET AN EMAIL REMINDER WHEN THE FILM BECOMES AVAILABLE
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, India 2018, 448 mins
Expansive, affectionate and deeply passionate, this is an extraordinary documentary film, a labour of love by Indian filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. Deeply influenced by Jiří Menzel´s 1966 Closely Observed Trains, film director Dungarpur met his hero in 2010 to start a conversation which has culminated in an epic, seven-hour-plus film that not only explores the deceptively whimsical comic films of Menzel, but all of the artists who strove to make films that whispered subversion and rebellion often at the risk of their livelihood, or even their lives. Filmed over a period of seven years, Dungarpur and his team interviewed filmmakers, actors, crew members, writers, historians and critics who had been touched by the Czechoslovak New Wave – including Věra Chytilová, Miloš Forman, Vojtěch Jasný, Ivan Passer, Ken Loach, Juraj Jakubisko, Jaromír Šofr, Andrzej Wajda, Dušan Hanák, Štefan Uher, Jan Němec, and Miroslav Ondříček among others. More info about the Second Run’s film release4
