Lecture & Film: VZLETY A PÁDY

VZLETY A PÁDY  Flights and Falls

Czech Republic 2000. D: Věra Chytilová. Documentary film. 108 mins. (52 mins + 56 mins). Digital. Original language version with English subtitles.

Lecture & Film: Věra Chytilová
Between Surrealism and Subversion: The Films of Věra Chytilová

With her surrealist-inspired, anarchic works, Věra Chytilová gave cinema a new face in the 1960s. The Lecture & Film series “Between Surrealism and Subversion: The Films of Věra Chytilová” presents the director’s most important works with introductions by experts who situate Chytilová in the context of the current film studies debate.

On Thursday, January 20, scholar and independent journalist Jan Čulík (University of Glasgow) will give a video lecture titled “Chytilová’s Inheritance: A prescient analysis of boorishness” on the feature film DĚDICTVÍ ANEB KURVAHOŠIGUTNTAG. The film takes a look at the excesses of the post-communist era with bitter irony and brutal realism. In another video lecture on Thursday, January 27, film scholar Peter Hames (Staffordshire University) will talk about Chytilová’s unorthodox approach to the field of documentary filmmaking, using VZLETY A PÁDY as an example. This rarely screened, two-part TV work takes the lives of three Czech photographers as the starting point for an exploration of cultural and countercultural movements in Czechoslovakia since the 1930s.

Peter Hames is visiting professor of film at Staffordshire University in the United Kingdom. He has recently edited two issues of Studies in Eastern European Cinema that focus on Chytilová’s work.