{"id":11756,"date":"2014-03-14T08:52:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T12:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11756"},"modified":"2014-03-13T09:54:36","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T13:54:36","slug":"vera-chytilova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/vera-chytilova\/","title":{"rendered":"V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1 (1929-2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe data-src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bGdu_sab9pg\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The great Czech filmaker V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1 has died at age 85. She is remembered \u00a0in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/daily-vera-chytilova-1929-2014\">Fandor<\/a>\u00a0(which is also where I found this clip from her masterpiece &#8220;Daisies&#8221;) by\u00a0\u00a0David Hudson:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11758\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/verac-e1394718576664.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11758\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11758 lazyload\" alt=\"V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1 in 2009\" data-src=\"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/verac-e1394718576664.jpg\" width=\"440\" height=\"283\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 440px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 440\/283;\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11758\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1 in 2009<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe director and screenwriter V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1, the first lady of Czech film, died today in Prague at the age of 85,\u201d reports the Prague Post. \u201cAs a filmmaker, Chytilov\u00e1 already made news with her student films, Ceiling (Strop, 1961) and A Bagful of Fleas (Pytel blech, 1962), but it was her provocative 1966 film Daisies (Sedmikr\u00e1sky) that made her a household name in then-Czechoslovakia, even at the height of the otherwise male-dominated Czech New Wave that included such luminary figures as Milo\u0161 Forman and Ji\u0159\u00ed Menzel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cShe was unique in the history of Czech cinema as a high-profile director during the New Wave, Normalization, and post-Communism periods who did not pursue a filmmaking career outside the country,\u201d notes Kevin McFarland at the AV Club. \u201cChytilov\u00e1 didn\u2019t simply represent a female presence in a male-dominated cinematic movement; she stood out as the most vocally political and aesthetically experimental filmmaker of the bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The AP notes that Daisies \u201cproved her reputation as a provocateur and helped establish her as an artistic force at home and abroad. Like the movies of other new Czech directors of the time, it represented a radical departure from socialist realism, a typical communist-era genre focusing on realistically depicting the working class\u2019 troubles. The heroes of Daisies\u2014two teenage girls\u2014decide to get spoiled because the entire world is spoiled, and they want to have some fun. It was immediately banned before winning the Grand Prix at the Bergamo Film Festival in Italy in 1967\u2026. Of her 20 feature movies, her major works include Fruit of Paradise, Calamity, Panelstory, The Very Late Afternoon of the Faun and The Inheritance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cCholeric, diabolically crazy, aggressive, ironic, sarcastic, inflexible and arrogant\u2014just a few of the phrases used by the Czech media to describe her after she collected her prize,\u201d noted Kate Connolly in a profile for the Guardian in 2000. \u201cSome who know her say these characteristics stem from a bitterness she shares with others of her generation, who spent the best years of their lives working under a totalitarian regime. She describes herself as an \u2018overheated kettle that you can\u2019t turn down,\u2019 but puts it down to impatience. \u2018You always have to work as if what you\u2019re working on could be your last,\u2019 she says. \u2018I want to move on, even if I have to crawl.\u2019 Chytilov\u00e1 cultivates the art of being deliberately ruthless. \u2018I have no desire to cuddle my audience,\u2019 she emphatically states.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOn the surface, Daisies\u2019 assemblage of outlandish scenarios enacted by two ferociously antiestablishment figures would seem to mark it as simple anarchic slapstick, like a New Wave Marx Brothers comedy,\u201d suggested Criterion\u2019s Michael Koresky in 2012. \u201cBut Chytilov\u00e1 has called her film \u2018a philosophical documentary in the form of a farce.\u2019 \u2026 By refusing to cultivate a psychological connection between audience and character, and by confounding any sense of narrative momentum, Chytilov\u00e1 and her screenwriting partner Ester Krumbachov\u00e1 create protagonists who seem to have no future or past. Blank slates, they have been interpreted over the years variously as embodiments of healthy rebellion and the banality of evil. Either way, they are good representations of Chytilov\u00e1\u2019s belief that \u2018people are primitives and aesthetes at the same time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cChytilova continued to make films into the 2000s, but Daisies remains her best-known work,\u201d wrote Nicolas Rapold in the New York Times, also in 2012. \u201c\u2018You don\u2019t really begin working creatively until you are at a point where you don\u2019t know,\u2019 she said a year after making Daisies. Today her film still has that fresh, try-anything outlook.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The great Czech filmaker V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1 has died at age 85. She is remembered \u00a0in Fandor\u00a0(which is also where I found this clip from her masterpiece &#8220;Daisies&#8221;) by\u00a0\u00a0David Hudson: \u201cThe director and screenwriter V\u011bra&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1510],"class_list":["post-11756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-vera-chytilova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11756"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11761,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11756\/revisions\/11761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}