Vera Chytilová, February 2, 1929 – March 12, 2014.

With a Meopta Admira 8 II A in 1956.

food in the movie Daisies • 1966 • Vera Chytilová

SUBLIME CINEMA #638 - DAISIES

Vera Chytilová was a prolific and underrated Czech director who specialized in avant-garde, sociopolitically charged comedies, which sometimes got her into trouble with government censors. ‘Daisies’ was initially banned by the Czechoslovak government due to its depictions and imagery of wasting food (of all things) and then went on to be very well received elsewhere, which always ends up the case.  

Sedmikrásky / Daisies | 1966 | Czechoslovakia

Director: Vera Chytilová

Production designer: Karel Lier / Set decorator: Frantisek Straka

Fruit of Paradise, Vera Chytilová, 1969

Sedmikrásky, Věra Chytilová, 1966

oh that was a special one

you don't come across films like this every day, kids

Wolf's Hole (Vera Chytilová, 1987)

Cast: Miroslav Macháček, Tomás Palatý, Stepánka Cervenková, Jan Bidlas, Rita Dudusová, Irena Mrozková, Hana Mrozkovy, Norbert Pycha, Simona Racková, Roman Fiser, Frantisek Stanek, Radka Slavíková, Jitka Zelenková, Petr Horacek. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Daniela Fischerová. Cinematography: Jaromir Sofr. Production design: Ludvik Siroky. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Michael Kocáb. 

If Wolf's Hole sometimes feels a little, well, cryptic, that may be in part because we're not attuned to the cultural idiom of a 1980s Czech filmmaker like Vera Chytilová. But it may also be because she's being intentionally crypic, slyly making her film a portrait of life under an authoritarian regime by doing just enough to trick the censors. It's ostensibly a horror movie about teenagers on a ski trip who find themselves at odds with the adults supervising them. The adults are an older man who wants them to call him "Daddy" (Miroslav Macháček) and his younger assistants, Dingo (Tomás Palatý), and Babeta (Stepánka Cervenková). They quickly reveal themselves as truly eccentric people -- if "people" is what they are. To reveal any more is to deprive the new viewer of a nice "Say what?" moment. There's not a lot of skiing done on this trip. Instead, the teens are subjected to a good number of indignities, culminating in Daddy's order that they must pick one from their group to die. It's an itchy kind of movie without a lot of horror movie shocks but instead a fine way of keeping everyone, both the characters and the audience, off balance. 

Daisies (1966)

“Do you feel how life flies?“

Director: Vera Chytilova

Cinematographer: Jaroslav Kureca

Věra Chytilová, February 2, 1929 – March 12, 2014.

Marie & Marie. Daisies | Sedmikrásky [Věra Chytilová, 1966]

Jitka Cerhová (Marie I, the brunette) and Ivana Karbanová (Marie II, the blonde)

Daisies (Czech: Sedmikrásky) is a Surrealist dramatic comedy written and directed by Věra Chytilová regarded as a milestone of the Czechoslovak New Wave movement.

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Daisies • 1966 • Vera Chytilová

daisies (1966) dir. věra chytilová

Wolf's Hole

Dir. Věra Chytilová // 1986

My favorite horror films