česky  english 

Advanced search
Article notification Print Decrease font size Increase font size

Menzel Retrospective: The Snowdrop Festival

(This article expired 29.08.2014.)

On October 15, at 7 pm, Bistro Bohem will screen the classic film THE SNOWDROP FESTIVAL (Slavnosti sněženek) by Oscar-winning director Jiří Menzel. In the film, three hunters from one faction chase after a boar that seeks refuge in a local schoolhouse. Since the schoolhouse is in neutral territory, it becomes the scene for a reckoning between two hunting factions and a wild time in a local pub brings about some unexpected consequences. (Dir. Jiří Menzel, 1984, 83 min., in Czech with English subtitles)

About Jiří Menzel:    
Jiří Menzel is an award-winning director, screenwriter, actor, and theater director. He studied filmmaking at the famous Czech National Film Academy, FAMU, in Prague. He was one of the leaders of the Czech New Wave. Most notably, Menzel won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968 for his first feature-length film Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966). With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces in 1968, and the period of so-called ‘normalization’ that followed, he was one of the first directors to be barred from filmmaking. Menzel’s controversial film Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 1969) was banned by the government, but released twenty years later, in 1990, after the collapse of the communist regime. The film won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. In 1987, his film My Sweet Little Village (Vesničko má středisková, 1985) was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film. Other renowned works include Capricious Summer (Rozmarné léto, 1968), Cutting It Short (Postřižiny, 1981) and most recently I Serve the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2006). Menzel is a member of the Czech Film and Television Academy, the European Film Academy and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has received many prestigious awards, among them the French order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Akira Kurosawa Prize for a lifetime’s achievement at the San Francisco Film Festival.  

Event Details:
Location: Bistro Bohem
600 Florida Avenue, Washington, DC 20001
www.bistrobohem.com

Admission is free.

Praha and PSJ