Joseph Kilián (Jurácek/Schmidt, 1963) & The Sun in a Net (Uher, 1962):
Riverside Studios Cinema, 8pm
Time Out review of Joseph Kilian:
A bizarre, consciously Kafkaesque allegory in which a young man wanders
the streets of Prague fruitlessly searching for a man called Joseph
Kilián, of whom no one seems to have heard. Passing a state cat-shop, he
impulsively hires a cat for the day, only to find, nightmarishly, that
the shop is no longer there when he tries to return the cat as required.
Wittily poking fun at the personality cult (a huge portrait of Stalin
looms over a roomful of frayed agit-prop posters and Cold War slogans),
Jurácek and Schmidt scarcely put a foot wrong in evoking the
incomprehensible mazes - simultaneously absurd and terrifying - of
totalitarian bureaucracy.
Tom Milne
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Riverside introduction to The Sun in a Net:
Štefan Uher's exquisite, groundbreaking feature is consistently ranked
amongst the greatest films in the history of Slovak cinema and is cited
as the film that kick-started the whole 'Czechoslovak New Wave'
movement. Bringing to the screen a number of hitherto unacceptable
social and political themes, the film is a complex interplay of sunlight
and darkness, sound and silence, truth and lies.
'It has the
vivacity and love of life that we found in the early films of Truffaut,
for example. The only mystery is why has it been unknown outside
Czechoslovakia for almost half a century?'
- Senses of Cinema
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