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- On Tour: DJORDJEVIC’s Working class goes to hell
ENFF On Tour lands in Rotterdam next Sunday, October 27, at Kino for the Dutch premiere of Working Class Goes to Hell by Serbian director Mladen Đorđević. The director of The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (2009) returns with another uncompromising, wildly imaginative, and transgressive mix of genre and social drama that you won’t want to miss. - On Tour: CHAJDAS’s IMAGO
ENFF arrives in The Hague with the post-punk psychological drama Imago by Polish director Olga Chajdas. The Dutch premiere of Imago will take place on Friday, November 1, at 19:00 at Laaktheater, The Hague. Our signature Balkan cocktail will be served before the screening. - On Tour: Katalin MOLDOVAI debut’s Without Air
The debut feature film by Romanian director Katalin Moldovai comes to LHC Utrecht as part of the ENFF On Tour program. A seemingly innocent report triggers a chain of events that causes Ana, a high school teacher, to lose her footing in the world she once believed was secure.
| Director | Jiri Menzel |
| Writer | Bohumil Hrabal, Jiri Menzel |
| Camera | Jaromir Sofr |
| Editor | Jirina Lukesova |
| Cast | Vaclav Neckar, Rudolf Hrusinsky, Vlastimil Brodsky, Jitka Zelenohorska |
| Sound | Jiri Pavlik |
| Producer | Karel Kochman |
| Original Title | SKRIVANCI NA NITI |
| Year | 1969 |
| Length | 94 min |
| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Subtitles | English |
| Screening | Sunday 11 November | 19:00 hours | Filmhuis Den Haag |
| Section | CLOSING FILM |
A remarkable, dark, bitter comedy directed by Oscar winning director Jiri Menzel. The film was banned by the Czechoslovak government and went unseen until the fall of the Communist regime and its premiere at the 1990 Berlinale, where it won the Golden Bear. The film will be screeened in the presence of Václav Neckář, famous Czech singer and actor, who many remember from Jiri Menzel’s Oscar winning ‘Closely Watched Trains’.
Synopsis
Set in the late 1950s in communist Czechoslovakia, the story concerns the irrepressible goodness of a bunch of intelligent and educated people who are imprisoned by the government in labour camps for being ‘bourgeois elements’ and forced to work in a junkyard for the purposes of re-education. It focuses on the playful, perky and romantic interactions between the male and female groups of prisoners while in the meantime some of them are taken away in a mysterious black car, never to be seen again. A funny, bitter, satirical, allegorical and meaningful Czech classic about the significance of humour and the strength of human spirit while living under repressive regimes.
Festivals & Awards (selection)
Berlin International Film Festival, 1990 – Golden Bear Award, FIPRESCI Prize | Finale Plzen Film Festival, 1990 – Golden Kingfisher Award | Montreal Film Festival, 1990 | Locarno Film Festival, 1990 | Singapore International Film Festival, 1991 | Cottbus Film Festival, 2004
Director’s bio
Born on February 23, 1938 in Prague, the Academy Award-winning Jiri Menzel is one of the most influential names in 20th century European cinema. Alongside Milos Forman and Vera Chytilova, he is a leading representative of the Czech New Wave. Menzel’s debut ‘Closely Watched Trains’ won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967, and he has since produced around 30 films that are marked by controversial political topics and subtle irony for which some have been censored. Menzel is an actor too, and has more than 75 film performances in his acting filmography.
