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Description
A film by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
Epic, expansive, affectionate and deeply passionate, CzechMate – In Search of Jiri Menzel is the definitive work on the Czechoslovak New Wave. This extraordinary documentary film, a labour of love by archivist and filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, has a depth and scale unparalleled in the study of the Czechoslovak cinema.
Jiri Menzel’s debut film Closely Observed Trains (Ostre sledovane vlaky, 1966) made a profound impression on young film student Dungarpur. Years later, he invited Menzel to meet him in a Prague cafe – and so began a conversation and a friendship that has culminated in this epic, seven-hour film that not only explores the deceptively whimsical comic films of JiÅÃ Menzel, but all of the artists who strove to make films that whispered subversion and rebellion often at the risk of their livelihood, or even their lives.
Filmed over a period of seven years, Dungarpur and his team interviewed filmmakers, actors, crew members, writers, historians and critics who had been touched by the New Wave – including Vera Chytilova, Milos Forman, Vojtech Jasny, Ivan Passer, Ken Loach, Juraj Jakubisko, Jaromir Sofr, Andrzej Wajda, Dusan Hanak, Stefan Uher, Jan Nemec, and Miroslav Ondricek among them.
CzechMate – In Search of JiÅÃ Menzel reminds us of the genius, originality and bravery of the artists of the ‘Czech Miracle’, one of the most important and influential movements in the history of cinema.