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 glass into the alternate universe of Balnibarbi, where the paranoid residents live according to the absurdist laws of a shadowy regime and resistance is futile. Shuttling its hapless protagonist through a series of increasingly outlandish, tragicomic set pieces, the second of only two features made by Pavel Juráček—a renegade whose career was effectively squashed by state censors—is among the Czechoslovak New Wave’s most daring commentaries on life under totalitarianism.
Up Next in Czechoslovak New Wave
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Footprints
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.
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The Hall of Lost Footsteps
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.
