Seven Close Encounters 2018 / Marketa Lazarová / Czechoslovakia 1967
Tono Stano presents
This wide-ranging fresco, set in the early Middle Ages and focusing on the love between a pious virgin and an unruly heathen from a marauding yeomen family, is both a unique reconstruction of a distant epoch and an ecstatic poem. The expressive modernist work, capitalizing on the film achievements of the 1960s, is a singular accomplishment in Czech and world cinema.
Tono Stano presents
“I chose Marketa Lazarová because, in my view, it totally and utterly fulfils the criteria for an outstanding work of art, even with its minor imperfections. I first saw it when I was a boy and it really had an impact on me; it influenced me and helped me understand certain contexts in my work. This film continues to fascinate me, also for the fact that, from the very beginning, I instinctively stopped perceiving the story as an essential element. I immerse myself in it and feast my eyes on all its subtleties, on the cruelties, the mire, and, above all, on the majesty of it all. I often think about this film when I’m not watching it; it perfectly captures our contemporary world. And that’s chiefly thanks to Vláčil, whose genius was kissed by God.”
This wide-ranging fresco, set in the early Middle Ages, is both a unique reconstruction of a distant epoch and an ecstatic poem. The expressive modernist work, capitalizing on the film achievements of the 1960s, is a singular accomplishment in Czech and world cinema.
Zdena Škapová
160 min / Black & white, DCP
Director František Vláčil
/ Screenplay František Pavlíček, František Vláčil
/ Dir. of Photography Bedřich Baťka
/ Music Zdeněk Liška
/ Editor Miroslav Hájek
/ Production Filmové studio Barrandov
/ Cast Josef Kemr, František Velecký, Magda Vášáryová, Ivan Palúch, Vlastimil Harapes, Vladimír Menšík, Zdeněk Kryzánek, Zdeněk Řehoř, Pavel Landovský, Karla Chadimová
/ Sales Národní filmový archiv
František Vláčil (b. 1924, Český Těšín, Czechoslovakia – 1999, Prague). Selected filmography: The White Dove (1960), The Devil’s Trap (1961), The Valley of the Bees (1967), Adelheid (1969), Smoke on the Potato Fields (1976), Shadows of a Hot Summer (1977), Shades of Fern (1984), The Magician (1987)
Národní filmový archiv
Závišova 5, 140 00, Praha 4
Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
Tomáš Žůrek
Distributor, Sales Agent
Tono Stano
Other
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