April 20-24, 27-28, 30

At the same time that selected highlights from the Czech New Wave will screen at the Vancity Theatre (joined by one other controversial classic), the Vancouver International Film Centre will be hosting a special exhibit of 50 Czech movie posters dating from 1910 through 2000, including original and creative posters created for a wide range of Czech, American, Russian, European and Japanese films. Special thanks to the Embassy of the Czech Republic, Ottawa (in particular Petra Klobuiakova) and the Czech National Film Archive for making this series possible. The poster exhibit is derived from an earlier display at the Cinematheque Quebecois curated by Maria Sylvestrová. For more about the poster exhibit click here: CZECH POSTERS

April 20, 7:15; April 28, 9:15

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968 // Director: Juraj Herz // 95 min // 35mm

"An extraordinary dark fantasy that is at once allegory and hyperrealism-much like the era it depicts, the rise of Nazism. Based on a novella by Ladislav Fuks, it tells of a conscientious Prague crematorium employee who becomes so taken with the importance of his work...that he plans to eliminate the unfit. His mystical mission is in accord with current Nazi thinking and he is an easy convert...This eerie political horror-thriller recalls the German Expressionist works of Murnau and Lang, which were so prescient in evoking fascist delusions of grandeur."-Pacific Film Archive

April 20, 9:30; April 24, 7:30

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1965 // Director: Jan Nemec // 63 min // 35mm

Nemec's remarkable directorial debut is a bleak, expressionistic work with surrealistic overtones. It's a technically brilliant study of two Jewish boys who escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another and are hunted down by a group of senile guards.

April 21, 7:15; April 24, 8:45

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1963 // Director: Milo Forman // 85 min // 35mm

Forman's first feature, co-written with Ivan Passer, tells the semi-autobiographical story of 17-year-old Peter who gets a distasteful job as a supermarket detective. Confounded by the adult world, misunderstood by his well-intentioned parents, awkward in romance, Peter is an early prototype for the ironic resignation common to Forman protagonists.

April 22, 7:30; April 27, 9:15

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1969 // Director: Jaromil Jire // 80 min // 35mm

Based on the classic novel by Milan Kundera, Jire' film marks the end of the Czech New Wave, shot during Prague Spring, but released after the repression resumed. In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the university by his fellow students because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.

April 22, 9:00; April 28, 7:15

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1969 // Director: Karel Kachnya // 94 min // 35mm

Kachnya's masterpiece explores a crucial night in the lives of Ludvik, a high-ranking bureaucrat, and his semi-estranged wife Anna. They return home from a reception to find that their home has been comprehensively bugged. "During the long and sleepless night, they tear each other apart with Albee-like ferocity while imagining the worst that the future may hold for them...the bitterest and most scathing account of what it takes to get ahead in a Communist bureaucracy."-Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide

April 23, 7:15; April 30, 9:00

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968 //Director: Vojtech Jasn // 91 min // 35mm

Jasn's mix of modern fairy tale and political morality play won a Special Jury prize at Cannes and acted as a catalyst for the burgeoning New Wave. The story of a magic cat whose gaze made everyone show his true colours broke the lock on the chest that for so many years had confined visual fantasy in Czechoslovakia.

April 23, 9:00; April 27, 7:15

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1964 //Director: Oldrich Lipsk // 99 min // 35mm

A parody of all things Western (especially American), seen through the eyes of an Eastern European. At the Trigger Whiskey Saloon, a beautiful temperance crusader is threatened by hard-drinking villains. Riding to her rescue is Lemonade Joe, who doesn't touch the "fire water." A sweet and often very funny spoof from Oldrich Lipsk, who began his career as artistic director of Prague's Satirical Theatre.

April 21, 9:00; April 30, 7:15

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1933 //Director: Gustav Machat // 82 min // 35mm

Hedy Lamarr stars as Eva, a young woman who marries an older man and is rejected on their wedding night. Frustrated, she runs away and meets a younger man who responds to her unfulfilled yearnings. Dubbed "the most whispered about picture in the world," the mostly wordless film shocked moviegoers with its erotic depiction of sex, particularly scenes of a young Lamarr swimming naked.