SEDMIKRASKY, feb 26

Today’s film 'Sedmikrasky'/'Daisies' is directed by a gutsy Czech woman!

This freewheeling 1966 gem of the Czech New Wave is an attack on
consumerism and materialism and many other aspects of the male dominated
society of the time!
{This film was, like our previous screening, banned by the communist
government.}

SEDMIKRASKY/DAISIES
by
VERA CHYTILOVA

A witty surrealist comedy about two uninhibited young women Marie and
Marie who work together to create mischief and turn against the numbing
state of society in a madcap flurry of pranks and material destruction
that seem to be harmless but each of the moves is loaded with consequences
that soon snowball into serious trouble.. Seeing the world ruined and
values worthless, they decide to "go bad."
74 MINS | COLOUR | CZECH with ENGLISH subtitles | AUDI 6:15pm |

Part of the Czech New Wave of the early 1960s, Vera Chytilova made films
that were acclaimed for their visual experimentation and formal
innovation. While this reputation gained her international respect, it
also resulted in criticism by officials in her own country, which
disapproved of avant-garde styles and themes.


catch a scene from the film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-LwM0s9fY
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzaiBZ4V-Qw&feature=related


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MORE YUMMY STUFF FOR THE HUNGRY/TIME RICH:


Everyone does what they can to avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic
human trait. People don't want to think—they can't make the connection
between entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People will
not be human until they get pleasure from thought—only a thinking person
can be a full person."
                                                 —Vera Chytilova, 1978

"One should try everything" insists one of the two heroines of Daisies
(1966). Heedless of clichÈ and formula, Chytilova explodes narrative and
bends the frame: her films donít stop until they've filled every crevice
with invention. Daisies attacks any pretense that human society is more
than a mechanism for organizing the consumption of food.

Romantic love is but one of the bourgeois ideals sacrificed over the
course of the film: the women also smash the cinematic illusion of
three-dimensional space, as they scissor up their own film images into a
jigsaw of body parts.

DAISIES was banned by the government until 1967 but when it was released
it won the Grand Prix at the film festival in Bergamo, Italy.
The films preferred by the Soviet-dominated Czech government included
straightforward stories of industrial heroes, films based on classic
literature and fairy stories,and domestic and detective comedies.
There was a profound dislike and distrust of allegorical content and
avant-garde experimentation, which was associated with intellectualism and
elitism by the bureaucrats and politicians who controlled the film
industry.Officially they complained that the imagery of the film revealed
a wastage of food, referring to the scenes in which the main characters
destroy a banquet setting.