Peter Hames

theme and tradition

Czech and Slovak cinema

The Czechoslovak New Wave was originally published in 1985 and was quickly established as the world's leading authoritative English-language text. A study of the most significant movement in post-war Central and East European cinemas, it examines the origins of a movement against the political and cultural developments of the 1960s leading to the Prague Spring of 1968. Peter Hames also summarizes key aspects of Czech and Slovak histories between the wars and in the 1940s and 1950s. Directors discussed include Milos Forman, Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Menzel, Jan Nemec.

The Czechoslovak New Wave

Analysis of 24 films including: People of the mountains, Ashes and diamonds, Knife in the water, A shop on the high street, Closely observed trains, Daisies, Man of marble, Colonel Redl, The decalogue (Dekalog), Satantango, The garden, Alice (directed by Jan Svankmajer).

The Cinema of Central Europe

Catherine Portuges

The cinemas of Eastern and Central Europe have been moving away from earlier Cold War perspectives and iconographies toward identifications more closely linked to a redefined Europe. Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 studies the shifts in the dynamics between film production, exhibition, and reception in Eastern bloc countries as they moved from state-sponsored systems toward the free market. The contributors and editors of this exciting volume examine the interrelations between thematic, aesthetic, and infrastructural changes; the globalization of the international cinema marketplace; and the problems and promises arising from the privatization of national cinemas. Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 also addresses the strategies employed for preserving national cinemas and cultures through an analysis of films from the Czech and Slovak republics, the former German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslavia. The study provides a picture of Eastern European cinema at a critical juncture as well as its connections to the emergent world of transnational media. Contributors include Barton Byg, Alexandra Foamente, Andrew Horton, Dina Iordanova, Ewa Mazierska, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, and Bogdan Stefanescu,

Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe After 1989

The Films of Jan Švankmajer

Dark Alchemy

Československá Nová Vlna

This text explores the legacy of the legendary Czech surrealist filmmaker, a key influence on directors such as Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam, and one of the greatest animators in cinema history.

The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer

Czech animator Jan Svankmajer is one of the most distinctive and influential of contemporary filmmakers. As a leading member of the Prague Surrealist Group, his work is linked to a rich avant-garde tradition and an uncompromising moral stance that brought frequent tensions with the authorities in the normalization years following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Svankmajer's formative influences have been the pre-war surrealists, the Prague of Rudolf II, experimental theatre, folk puppetry and, above all, the political traumas of the past 50 years. Like his contemporaries--including playwright president Vaclav Havel, and, in exile, novelist Milan Kundera and filmmaker Milos Forman--Svankmajer's dominant life experiences have been the realities of the Stalinist system, both the explicit state terror of the 1950s and the Brezhnevist neo-Stalinism of the 1970s and the 1980s. After training in puppetry and working in the Prague theatre, he made his first film in 1964. He directed a number of important films in the 1960s, including the live-action and Kafkaesque Byt (The Flat, 1968) and Zahrada (The Garden, 1968) and consolidated his international reputation with Moznosti dialogu (Dimensions of Dialogue) in 1982. Since then, he has continued his highly visual and poetic approach in two feature-length films, Neco z Alenky (Alice, 1987) and Lekce Faust (Faust, 1994). As a filmmaker, Svankmajer is constantly exploring and analyzing his concern with power, fear and anxiety, confrontation and destruction, magic, the irrational and the absurd, and displays a bleak outlook on the possibilities for dialogue. In challenging accepted narrative, the bourgeoisie of realism (nezval), and the thematic and formal conventions of the mainstream media, Svankmajer's work is startlingly dynamic, subversive, and confrontational.

Examines the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period.

Czech and Slovak Cinema

This book is the first study in English to examine some of the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period. It examines links between theme, genre, and visual style, and looks at the ways in which a range of styles and traditions has extended across different historical periods and political regimes. Czech and Slovak Cinema provides a unique study of areas of Central European film history that have not previously been examined in English.

Peter Hames

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