On 16 October, Curzon Bloomsbury hosted a screening of a Spoor, a film adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which was translated into English this year, just after its author won the Man Booker International Prize for her constellation novel Flights (2007, translated in 2018). The Screening was followed…
| 08/11/2018
Jan Švankmajer adapting a play by the Čapek brothers: this combination alone suggests that Insects must be an extraordinary project. Based on Karel and Josef Capek’s Pictures from the Insects’ Life (1922), filmmaker and artist Švankmajer has created a surreal comedy, which is pieced together by scenes from the actual film and behind-the-scenes insights. It starts…
| 07/11/2018
Strange noises. Suddenly, a clumsy boy in camouflage appears out of nowhere. He carries a toy gun, taking aim at passing cars. An Audi appears on the horizon, and Heduš (Jan František Uher), the camouflaged boy, recognises the driver, Mára (Tomáš Mrvík). The car’s stolen and Mára’s on the run. Not because he’s stolen the…
| 02/11/2018
Wartime, circa 1943. Young Eda (Alois Grec) and his family live in an apartment block in Prague. From the window, Eda can see the barracks of Nazi soldiers occupying Prague. In the backyard, people from the house play volleyball in the afternoons. Eda’s father (Ondřej Vetchý) secretly listens to resistance radio programmes and refuses to…
| 31/10/2018
Tonda Blaník’s a lobbyist. His hobby’s fashion at its boldest. His best friend’s his mum. And he’s running for President. This brief profile’s what we see in the first minutes of Marek Najbrt’s President Blaník (2018), a political satire that plays somewhere between fiction and reality: Blaník’s not real, but the elections are. So are…
| 31/10/2018
With the rise of right-wing politics in Central Europe in recent years, the ‘filter bubble’, meaning that all-encompassing social media rarely confronts people with opinions that oppose their own, has led to growing division between those to the left, the right and at the centre. Should you be standing in a left or centre bubble,…
| 30/10/2018
First published in 1943 in New York, the story of the little prince and his travels hasn’t lost its relevance and popularity. Its message of love, responsibility and loss bears just as much meaning in the 21stcentury as it did 75 years ago. Translated into 300 languages, this timeless tale has touched over 400 million…
| 23/10/2018
The awarding winning Lost in Munich (Zelenka 2015) is a fast paced mix of documentary and farce. Director Petr Zelenka takes an absurdist look at the Munich Agreement of 1938, lauded as a diplomatic victory at the time, but still seen by Czechs as a total disaster and a betrayal. In the opening sequence newsreels of…
| 12/10/2018
‘UK Premieres and Best Discoveries 4-5 October 2018 Raindance Film Festival Vue Piccadilly 19 Lower Regent Street London SW1Y 4LR Tower. A Bright Day dir. Jagoda Szelc, Poland, 106 min BOOK NOW In an small rural community, Kaja returns to her family after a six-year absence, during which time her daughter Nina has been raised…
| 27/09/2018
Licu, a Romanian story is a sufficiently encompassing title: personal and national anecdotes line up like neat little toy soldiers in Ana Dumitrescu’s 2018 documentary. Licu, a 92-year-old man, muses on his life in the past near-century in Romania and the memories that have come to be his primary companions. Licu’s a fine and subtle narrator:…
| 01/09/2018