Radoslav Brzobohatý

The 1968 Czechoslovakian film All My Good Countrymen (Všichni dobrí rodáci) is a tremendous piece of cinema. It’s the kind of picture one watches on several occasions across a lifetime, both to better understand what it has to say and also to feel more attuned to the culture and history it represents. The film feels epic in scope, despite coming in at under two hours in length, and this is largely because of its focus on a single setting across a dozen or so years, with numerous wonderful and ugly things happening in the interim. Director Vojtech Jasný also wrote it, putting in a decade’s worth of work to make what would become his signature film. It would be the last feature he’d get to direct in his home country for decades, as Jasný was effectively banned from filmmaking as a result.Read More »

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Karel Kachyna’s 1970 The Ear is a harrowing tale that interweaves marital discord and surveillance paranoia. With its portrait of a government functionary who spends a sleepless night wondering if he’ll be arrested before daybreak, it’s no wonder that The Ear had to wait until 1989 for its Czech premiere; the wonder is that it was made at all. The latter, at least, can be explained by the fact that Kachyna’s long-time collaborator, scenarist Jan Procházka, was a government official of some standing – which accounts, no doubt, for The Ear’s insider perspective, playing as it does with the couple’s knowledge of which rooms in their comfortable house are likely bugged and which aren’t.Read More »