Czech Center and usual audience like every spring and fall Let him opens its doors on Monday and Tuesday evenings for film screenings. So, between May 13 and June 4, 2024, the already well-known Documentary Mondays and Fiction Tuesdays programs return, each with 4 films chosen on the brow. Access is free, and there will be no shortage of traditional Czech beer.
Documentary Mondays will bring to the screen, this time, 4 documentaries very different in subject and aesthetic, and their directors will participate in online Q&A sessions. The program starts on May 13, 2024, from 20:00, with an investigative documentary, made partly with a hidden camera. Limits of Europe (Apolena Rychlíková, 2024, 98′) follows the journey of Czech journalist Saša Uhlová, who enters the world of unskilled workers from Central and Eastern European countries, who have gone abroad, where they are exploited for minimum wages, but higher than those at home . Uhlová becomes one of the economic migrants essential to the prosperity of Western Europe and takes a job on a fruit and vegetable farm in Germany, IN A Irish hotel and as a nurse for the elderly in Marseilles.
The program continues on May 20, 2024 with a documentary-opera, a visual and sound show – Kapr Code (Lucie Králová, 2022, 91′). Although the name of the Czech composer Jan Kapr is not so well known, the films made by him are or proved valuable material in the creation of this documentary. The film uses Kapr’s musical scores as well as personal archival footage and, with the help of a Dadaist libretto, reveals his life and work against the backdrop of historical change. Behind-the-scenes footage of the choir recording deconstructs the biographical genre and shows us how difficult it can be to interpret archival materials, memories and linear narratives.
In 2024, Jan Švankmajer turns 90, so the Czech Centre and proposed shawl celebrate by showing a documentary about him, as well as a fiction film made by him, each season on Documentary Mondays and Fiction Tuesdays. So on May 27, 2024, you’ll be able to watch Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace (Jan Danhel, Adam Olha, 2020, 117′), a playful portrait, EC it captures Švankmajer in various moments and situations, as well as his views on food, fetishes or the end of humanity and Western civilization. His creative method is partly presented by the two directors, who spent three years with the famous filmmaker and artist.
Documentary Mondays ends on June 3, 2024 with Angel69 (Theo Montoya, 2022, 72′). A ghost haunts the streets of Medellin, while a young filmmaker tells his story IN A city marked by conflicts, violence and paradoxes. He recalls his childhood, his encounter with auteur cinema in his country, his discovery of sexuality and talks about how he set out to make his first film, a fiction about a ghost cult. The cast consisted of queer youth from Medellin, but the lead actor dies of an overdose at the age of 21. As the director sees other friends disappearing, Angel69 explores the fears, doubts and dreams of a lost generation, as well as one filmmaker’s struggle to keep making films.
And Tuesday evenings will be spent watching movies at the Czech Center, because Fiction Tuesdays run concurrently with Documentary Mondays. The start of the program, however, will take place at the Cinema Hall of the ILCaragiale National University of Theater Arts and Cinematography, on May 14, 2024, from 8:00 p.m. Then you will follow Markéta Lazarová (František Vláčil, 1967, 160′), considered the most important title in Czech film history, an essential film for all cinema lovers. More details about the film can be found in the Facebook event.
Švankmajer’s celebration will also take place on May 21, 2024, at the Czech Center, where Fiction Tuesdays screenings will continue. Then the public will see shot (Jan Švankmajer, 1988, 86′), a tribute to Carroll’s immense imagination, but at the same time a pretext for To develop your own imagination. The film is a recollection of the author’s childhood, as well as an attempt to evoke the experience of childhood for the audience.
On May 28, 2024, you are expected at the “musical of the totalitarian era”, as it is called The Smoke (Tomás Vorel, 1990, 94′). It introduces the viewer One industrial atmosphere, but at the same time organic, full of sarcasm and irony. An idealistic young civil engineer takes on his first job with hope and enthusiasm. However, the reality of work in the late socialist period, ironically depicted in the film, quickly disillusions him and destroys his idealism.
Fiction Tuesdays will also end on June 4, 2024 One fever dream note. Cracked (Otakar Vávra, 1947, 97′), an adaptation of Karel Čapek’s novel of the same name, us it features the engineer Prokop, terrified of his own invention – an explosive that comes with unimaginable devastating consequences, but which many others see as a much-sought-after tool for attaining absolute power.
Access to the screenings is free, and the films are subtitled in English. The screenings take place at Centrul Ceh Bucharest (Str. Ion Ghica, no. 11), except for the one on May 14. Doors open at 7:45 p.m., seats are first come, first served, and movies start at 8 p.m. To keep up to date with news about them, you can follow the Czech Center’s Facebook and Instagram pages, but also SITE their. The two programs are organized by Centrul Ceh Bucharest, with the support of Budweiser Budvar, and Fiction Tuesdays is organized in collaboration with UNATC IL Caragiale.
