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Vtackovia, siroty a blazni

Quinzaine 1971 | Feature film | 82'

This film is equal parts 1969 acid trip, socialist-era Eastern European allegorical political manifesto and mirror held up to the Slovak soul. Maybe the surreal aspect of the film is just an accident! In any case, this film shows us the rubble of Bratislava just after the Prague spring. Maybe Spring came late to Bratislava. Maybe it never came at all. There are some great (and classic) surreal scenes, but there is very little continuity to the story – in fact very little story per say at all. To recommend it, this film still has a cutting-edge feel more than 30 years after it was originally made. Its basic premise seems to be that life (or at least life in the Czechoslovak Soviet Socialist Republic at the end of the 1960s) drives one mad – and that madness leads to unthinkable barbarity. Hence the few truly nauseating scenes of violence. Still, a unique look at a unique place and time, with memorable images. View at your own risk.

Director

Juraj Jakubisko

From All Movie Guide: Versatile and highly esteemed Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko specializes in films that, within a variety of genres, reflect or comment upon Slovak culture. Before entering the film industry, Jakubisko taught still photography at a Bratislava secondary school for applied arts. He later worked for Czech television in Kosice before attending Prague’s film school, studying direction under Vaclav Wasserman. After graduating in 1965, Jakubisko worked with Alfred Radok at the Laterna Magika theater in Prague and began winning international acclaim with his experimental short films before he made his first feature film, Kristove Roky/The Crucial Years, in 1967. As with many of his subsequent features, Jakubisko co-wrote the script. Following his feature debut, Jakubisko made three features, the last of which, Vtackovia, Siroty a Blazni/Orphans and Fools (1969), was only shown at Sorrento (Italy), and then shelved until 1991. After that, Jakubisko was banned from feature filmmaking for 15 years. During that period, he occupied himself by making a few short documentaries, though in 1976 he made Tri Vrecia Cementu a Zivy Kohut/Three Sacks of Cement and a Living Cock, which was not released until 1978. He made his official return to filmmaking in 1979 with Postav Dom, Zasad’strom/Build a House, Plant a Tree. Jakubisko earned international acclaim in 1983 with Tisicrocna Vcela/The Thousand Year Old Bee, and won further acclaim and international awards in 1997 for Nejasná zpráva o konci sveta/An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World.

Artistic & technical sheet

With
Magda Vaca Ryova
Philippe Avron

Screenplay
Karol Sidon / Juraj Jakubisko

Prod: Como Films
72,avenue Kleber
Paris 16e

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