Of all the great Russian writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, none perfected the art of dualism quite like Anton Chekhov. The tragic and the comic, the internal and the external, the serious and the trivial, the lived and the imagined – in his work all coexist and converge; the borders between…
| 29/03/2018
Romania’s foreign-language submission for the 2018 Academy Awards, The Fixer had its British premiere this month at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London as part of Cinematheque, a monthly programme that focuses on promoting Romanian cinema. The movie comes out of the Romanian neo-realist cinema tradition that recently claimed prizes at Cannes and Berlin (Cristi…
| 27/03/2018
2018 is the year of anniversaries in Czech history with the Prague Spring (1968), the communist takeover (1948), the National Socialist annexation of the Sudetenland (1938) and – most significantly – the founding of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. An award-winning film that ties the legacy of the First Czechoslovak Republic together with the…
| 16/03/2018
‘KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival takes place in London each spring. Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London, the festival celebrates the best of Polish cinema and culture. Each year audiences can enjoy a selection of film and documentary screenings, both classic and contemporary, as well as talks and Q&As with the filmmakers. A selection…
| 05/03/2018
When Maria Draždechová (Zuzana Mauréry) enters her new classroom, she invites her new students to a round of introductions – as one would. Yet Draždechová isn’t so much interested in the children as in what their parents do: the ‘poor widow’ of a Russian officer, Draždechová gradually coerces the parents into helping her with errands…
| 16/11/2017
Alongside household names such as Miloš Forman and František Vláčil, Jan Němec was one of the key personalities responsible for the pioneering Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s. Given his death at the age of seventy-nine on the final day of shooting, Vlk z Královských Vinohrad (The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street) was…
| 14/11/2017
‘The annual Made in Prague Festival in its 21st edition presents a wonderful offering of films, visual arts, literature, theatre and music celebrating artistic expression, pursuing significant stories and engaging in extraordinary conversations. Hosting the first UK retrospective of film director Jan Němec, the festival unveils the Czech nominations for European and Academy Film Awards…
| 08/11/2017
With two more dates left (7 October and 25 November) the Vanek Trilogy: Living Room Soirees – an interactive theatre production inspired by Vaclav Havel’s Vanek Trilogy – is in the middle of its exciting run across London, recreating the experience, in the communist period, of being forced to watch theatre clandestinely in people’s private…
| 05/10/2017
Yelizaveta Smith and Georg Genoux’s School Number Three is a documentary with a deceptively simple storyline: it records stories told by teenagers who have lived through the crisis in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which started almost four years ago in November 2013. Based on the documentary play by Natalia Vorozhbyt – one of Ukraine’s leading playwrights…
| 03/10/2017
Lithuanian villages, as in most of Eastern Europe, are now in semi-terminal decline. Once lively places known for their traditions and values, they are increasingly deserted. Schools are closing down, and once-thriving churches becoming monuments to the past. So when CEEL contributor Agne Dovydaityte found her grandfather’s diary, detailing daily life in one such settlement…
| 12/09/2017