Věra Chytilová
Věra Chytilová | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 12 March 2014 | (aged 85)
Occupation | Film director |
Years active | 1962–2011 |
Spouse | Jaroslav Kučera |
Children | 2, including Tereza |
Věra Chytilová (2 February 1929 – 12 March 2014) was an
Early life and education
Chytilová was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, on 2 February 1929.[11] She had a strict Catholic upbringing, which would later come to influence many of the moral questions presented in her films.[12]
While attending college, Chytilová initially studied
Career
Upon her graduation from FAMU, both of Chytilová's short films saw theatrical release throughout Czechoslovakia. In 1963, Chytilová released her first feature film entitled Something Different.[13]
Chytilová is best known for her once highly controversial film Sedmikrásky (Daisies; 1966). Daisies is known for its unsympathetic characters, lack of a continuous narrative, and abrupt visual style. Chytilová states that she structured Daisies to "restrict [the spectator's] feeling of involvement and lead him to an understanding of the underlying idea or philosophy".[11]
In 1966, Vera Chytlova’s Daisies was banned from screening in her home country of Czechoslovakia for over a year, due to the depictions of gross food waste at a time in which food shortages were plaguing the area. In the film, the two main characters, Marie I and Marie II, not only present the folly of bored, spoiled middle-class women, but also their own helplessness as young women devoured by a society that values them only as sexual objects and is, as they say, spoiled anyway. The characters justify their cathartic behavior to themselves saying ‘If the world is rotten, let us also be rotten’. Chytlova battled censorship of this film for her biting anti-corruption and consumption critiques, still managing to win the Grand Prix at the Bergamo Film Festival in Italy. The film would cement Chytlova’s film career, gaining public notoriety not just in her home country but around the world.
After the Czechoslovakian liberalization of 1968 led by
It was in this climate that Chytlova would begin working on her next film,
Vera Chytlova was banned from filmmaking for seven years, still working under his husband's name until she was approached by the government, this time imploring her to make films for their state-run studio, Short Film Studios in 1976. Around the same time, she was invited to attend a newly assembled Year of Women film festival in the US that her government would not let her attend. The festival had asked to screen Daisies and Chytilová revealed that she had no uncensored prints of the film and that she was no longer allowed to make films. She was aware of two uncensored prints in Paris and Brussels, but neither were in her possession.
As a result, the festival began applying international pressure on the Czechoslovakian government by petitioning on Chytilová's behalf.[12] With this pressure, Chytilová wrote a letter directly to President Gustáv Husák detailing her career and personal belief in socialism.[11]
Due to the success of the pressure campaign and Chytilová's appeal to President Husak, Chytilová began production of Hra o jablko (The Apple Game, 1976).[17][12] The Apple Game was completed[13] and subsequently screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Hugo.[11][12]
After the release of The Apple Game, Chytilová was allowed to continue making films but was continually met with controversy and heavy censorship by the Czechoslovak government. Věra Chytilová's last film was released in 2006, and she taught directing at FAMU.[12]
Themes
Like many Czech New Wave filmmakers, Chytilová was influenced by post-Stalin Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. Chytilová sought to display the hypocrisy of the government by presenting the complete opposite. Chytilová was anti-consumerist and called herself an individualist, rather than a feminist.
Women star in almost all of Chytilová's films and ideas of gender, sex, and power are at the central idea of her films.
Czech society was the primary focus of Chytilová's work, although the style of Czech New Wave filmmakers was to have international relevancy.
Chytilova's films before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia were highly experimental, known for psychedelic colors and nonlinear editing. Daisies and Fruits of Paradise can be characterized by absurdism and surrealism. The color filters and other experimental tactics Chytilová used were exclusive to her films of the 1960s.
Legacy
Chytilová described herself as a control freak and, "An overheated kettle that you can't turn down".[18] Chytilová's "overheated" attitude made it difficult for her to gain work within the Soviet Union controlled film industry. She was known as being actively critical of the Soviet Union, stating that "My critique is in the context of the moral principles you preach, isn't it? A critical reflection is necessary".[12] She would routinely cause havoc and "hysterical scenes" to attempt to make films that were loyal to her vision regardless of the heavy censorship that was routinely imposed.[12]
Chytilová embodied a unique cinematographic language and style that does not rely on any literary or verbal conventions, but rather utilizes various forms of visual manipulations to create meaning within her films.[19] Chytilová used observations of everyday life in accordance with allegories and surreal contexts to create a personalized film style that is greatly influenced by the French New Wave, and Italian neorealism.[11]
Chytilová actively used a filmic style similar to cinéma vérité in order to allow the audience to gain an outside perspective of the film.[13] Her use of cinéma vérité is best illustrated in her 1966 film, Daisies, in which these techniques create a "philosophical documentary, of diverting the spectator from the involvement, destroying psychology and accentuates the humor".[13] Through these manipulations Chytilová created a disjunctive viewing experience for her audience forcing them to question the meaning of her films.
Chytilová is cited as a militant
Personal life and death
Chytilová was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, on 2 February 1929.[11] She refused to leave Czechoslovakia after the Soviet Union Invasion of 1968 stating that "Making films then became a mission".[12] She married cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera whom she met while attending FAMU.[20] During the Soviet Union occupation, when Chytilová could not find work as a director, she and her husband built their family home and raised their children – an artist Tereza Kučerová (born 1964) and cinematographer Štěpán Kučera (born 1968).
Chytilová died on 12 March 2014 in Prague, surrounded by her family, after long-term health issues.[21][22][23]
Selected filmography
Year | Title | Director | Screenplay | Story | Music | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1961 | The Ceiling | [24][25] | ||||
1962 | A Bagful of Fleas | |||||
1963 | Something Different | [26][27] | ||||
1966 | "At the World Cafeteria" in Pearls of the Deep | |||||
1966 | Daisies | [28][29] | ||||
1970 | Fruit of Paradise | [30] | ||||
1976 | The Apple Game | [17] | ||||
1978 | Inexorable Time | |||||
1979 | Prefab Story | [31] | ||||
1981 | Calamity | |||||
1981 | Chytilová Versus Forman − Consciousness of Continuity | |||||
1983 | The Very Late Afternoon of a Faun | |||||
1984 | Prague: The Restless Heart of Europe | |||||
1987 | Wolf's Hole | [32] | ||||
1987 | The Jester and the Queen | |||||
1988 | A Hoof Here, a Hoof There |
|||||
1990 | Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a Liberator | |||||
1991 | My Citizens of Prague Understand Me | |||||
1992 | The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday | |||||
1998 | Trap, Trap, Little Trap | |||||
2000 | Flights and Falls | |||||
2001 | Exile from Paradise | |||||
2005 | Searching for Ester | |||||
2006 | Pleasant Moments | [33] |
References
- ^ Brody, Richard. "The films of Věra Chytilová". The New Yorker. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ Wilson, Selected by Jake (16 May 2014). "Top 10 films". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ "Reprise : dans « Les Petites Marguerites », deux femmes s'ennuient ferme et nous font hurler de joie". Le Monde.fr (in French). 31 August 2022. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1987 Programme". berlinale.de. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
- ^ "16th Moscow International Film Festival (1989)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
- ^ "18th Moscow International Film Festival (1993)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 3 April 2014. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
- ČTK). 12 March 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Vera Chytilova biography". MS. Buffalo. Archived from the original on 1 April 2008. Retrieved 14 February 2018.
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- ^ a b Connolly, Kate (11 August 2000). "Bohemian Rhapsodist". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
- JSTOR 1210994.
- ^ ISBN 0-88778-056-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ "Véra Chytilova, cinéaste rebelle, est morte". Le Monde.fr (in French). 13 March 2014. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ČT 24. 12 March 2014. Retrieved 13 March 2014.
- ^ "Zemřela Věra Chytilová" (in Czech). novinky.cz. 12 March 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
- ^ "Movie Guide and Film Series". The New York Times. 23 March 2007. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ "Pavel Jurácek Season 2006". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ "BBC - Films - Festivals and Seasons - Czech Cinema season". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
Further reading
- Criterion Collection Essay
- Owen, Jonathan Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties. Berghahn Books (15 February 2011) ISBN 085745126X
- Extensive Biography at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 April 2008)
External links
- Věra Chytilová at IMDb
- Extensive Biography at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 April 2008)
- Additional Information and Timeline
- Criterion Collection