Czech Film

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 3, 2009

Harrison Kash
(417) 673-1261

 

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) -- The film ...And Give My Love to the Swallows (…a pozdravuji vlastovky) (Czechoslovakia, 1972) will be shown at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10 in Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall at Missouri Southern State University. The film is being presented as part of the continuing 47th Annual International Film Festival.

 

No admission is charged and the film is open to the public.

 

The acclaimed Czech New Wave film maker Jaromil Jires directed this true story of Maruska Kuderikova, a young Moravian girl who became a national hero when she joined the Czech Resistance during World War II and was arrested and executed during the Nazi occupation.

 

Kuderikova chronicled her experience as a prisoner in her diary but was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any means hate them. Jires transformed her story into an uplifting tale of sacrifice for the sake of a better life and future. International Film Guide called the film “a powerful and moving work."

 

After president Antonin Novotny’s hard-line regime was replaced by Alexander Dubcek in January of 1968, Czech directors were finally able to make daring and innovative films in an attempt to give socialism “a human face.” But after the Soviet invasion in August of the same year, the Czech film miracle came to an end. The manager of Czechoslovak Film industry was arrested and several directors went into exile while others were fired. Some films were shelved and “banned forever.”

Only in recent years the films of the enormously creative Czech New Wave movement of the 60s have emerged again.

Director Jaromil Jires attended the Cimelice vocational school in the early 50s and continued his education at FAMU, the state film academy in Prague. In 1963, he directed his debut feature The Cry, a plea for social change, which won special jury mention at the Cannes Festival. During the brief period of artistic freedom in

 

1968, Jires directed The Joke, a powerful critique of Stalinist totalitarianism. Obviously, it curried no favor with the Soviet dominated government, and vanished during the crisis.

COMING TUESDAY, MARCH 24
Andrzej Munk’s acclaimed anti-heroism satire Bad Luck

 

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