Programmer and critic Irena Kovarova, directors Miloš Forman and Jan Němec, and film professor Peter Hames discuss one of the most radical film movements of the 1960s.

Directed by Jiří Krejčík • 1967 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Iva Janžurová, Vladimír Pucholt, Pavel Landovský

This subversive small-town comedy centers on the investigation into an alleged rape purportedly committed by a man (Jiří Hrzán) on the eve of his wedding. As the bumbling investigators (Vla...

Directed by Ladislav Rychman • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Vladimír Pucholt, Irena Kačírková, Ivana Pavlová

This beloved musical—one of the Czechoslovak film industry’s first and most important forays into the genre—is a spirited ode to young love and rebellion. Set amid the bucolic splendor ...

Directed by František Vláčil • 1960 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Kateřina Irmanovová, Karel Smyczek, Anna Pitašová

The first feature by revered director František Vláčil (MARKETA LAZAROVÁ) is a poetic, deeply humanist parable following the intersecting fates of a carrier pigeon, a wheelchair-bound ...

Directed by František Vláčil • 1962 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Vítězslav Vejražka, Miroslav Macháček, Čestmír Řanda

The first in a trilogy of historical epics by director František Vláčil (followed by the renowned MARKETA LAZAROVÁ and THE VALLEY OF THE BEES), THE DEVIL’S TRAP unfolds in sixteenth...

Directed by František Vláčil • 1968 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Petr Čepek, Jan Kačer, Věra Galatíková

The final installment in František Vláčil’s trilogy of historical epics (directly following his most widely heralded work, MARKETA LAZAROVÁ) follows a young man (Petr Čepek) in thirteenth-century...

Directed by František Vláčil • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Petr Čepek, Emma Černá, Jan Vostrčil

One of director František Vláčil’s most renowned works, this searing romantic tragedy considers questions of national trauma through a powerful human love story. In the aftermath of World War II, f...

Directed by Oldřich Lipský • 1971 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Lubomír Lipský, Jiřina Bohdalová, Iva Janžurová

Infused with an anarchic cartoon energy, this irresistibly silly, almost Dadaist black comedy traces the absurdities that arise when a mild-mannered schoolteacher named George Camel (Lubom...

Directed by Pavel Juráček • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Lubomír Kostelka, Klára Jerneková, Milena Zahrynowská

Inspired by “Gulliver’s Travels” and infused with the spirit of Kafka, this darkly surrealist fantasia finds Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) plunged through the looking gla...

Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1959 • Czechoslovakia

This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.

Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1960 • Czechoslovakia

This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.

Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1960 • Czechoslovakia

This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.

Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1963 • Czechoslovakia

The debut feature from Věra Chytilová interweaves two stories simultaneously: one a narrative about a frustrated mother (Vera Uzelacová) discontented with the drudgery of housework, the other a quasi documentary about a gymnast (real-life Olympi...

Directed by Evald Schorm • 1964 • Czechoslovakia

Director Evald Schorm reflects on the changing political tides of his generation in this clear-eyed study of idealism and disillusionment. Jarda (Jan Kačer) is a passionate Communist worker fervently dedicated to the principles of his party. But a...

Directed by Jan Němec • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ladislav Janský, Antonín Kumbera

With this simultaneously harrowing and lyrical debut feature, Jan Němec established himself as the most uncompromising visionary among the radical filmmakers who made up the Czechoslovak New Wave. Adapted fro...

Directed by Miloš Forman • 1964 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ladislav Jakim, Pavla Martínková, Jan Vostrčil

One of the first films to herald the arrival of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Miloš Forman’s stylistically inventive debut narrative feature follows the bumbling teenager of the title (Ladislav ...

Directed by Miloš Forman • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Vladimíra Pucholta, Vladimír Menšik, Ivan Kheil

With sixteen women to each man, the odds are against Andula in her desperate search for love—that is, until a rakish piano player visits her small factory town and temporarily eases her long...

Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Idá Kaminská, Josef Kroner, František Zvarík

An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and traged...

Directed by Ivan Passer • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Zdenek Bezusek, Karel Blazek, Vera Kresadlová

One of the most beloved films of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this digressive, easygoing slice of life takes place over the course of a weekend in a provincial town where a musician returns, alon...

Directed by Juraj Herz • 1965 • Czechoslovakia

In his debut film, Juraj Herz adapts Bohumil Hrabal's story about a man who works in a junk shop.

Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová, Marie Češková

If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named...

Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Václav Neckář, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds h...

Directed by Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm • 1966 • Czechoslovakia

A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression offered by the movement's versatile directors.

Directed by Jan Němec • 1966 • Czechoslovakia

In Jan Němec's surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an inter...