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Film: The Mist and A Report on Party and Guests

(This article expired 04.09.2015.)

Date: 09 November 2014 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM, Venue: American University

On November 9, at 4:30 pm, the Doyle Theater will screen THE MIST (Mlha) followed by A REPORT ON PARTY AND GUESTS (O slavnosti a hostech) as part of the series The Play’s the Thing: Václav Havel, Art and Politics.

"Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning."
~Václav Havel

Václav Havel (1936-2011), the dissident dramatist who went on to become a world-renowned statesman as first president of the Czech Republic, changed the course of twentieth-century history by mixing theater with politics and peacefully ending communism. Coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the program is based on the places and people that Havel knew, from his early career at Theatre on the Balustrade, to his friendships with filmmakers of the Czech New Wave, to his political ascendancy. Films are in Czech with subtitles. Special thanks to the National Film Archive Prague, Václav Havel Library, American University, and Embassy of the Czech Republic.

THE MIST by Radúz Činčera
In the early 1960s, Prague's celebrated Theatre on the Balustrade was a center for experimentation, mime, and theatre of the absurd. It's the place where Václav Havel began as a dramaturge and stagehand, and where his plays were later produced. The Mist poetically captures this famous theater from different perspectives. (1966, 28 minutes)

About the Director:
Radúz Činčera, born in 1923, was a Czech screenwriter and director. Furthermore, he was also the conceiver of the Kinoautomat, the world's first interactive film. Like many other Czech artists, Činčera was banned from directing movies and act in public once the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia started in 1968.

A REPORT ON PARTY AND GUESTS by Jan Němec
In A Report on Party and the Guests, a pleasant afternoon outing is cut short when a few pushy intruders force a group of friends to play a round of ridiculous party games. Jan Němec's absurdist parable on the behavior of authority figures is a landmark of the Czech New Wave of the brief Prague Spring. (1966, 68 minutes)

About the Director:
Jan Němec is a Czech filmmaker born in 1936 in Prague. Most of his work is related to the 1960s and the Czech New Wave. His most famous piece, A Report on Party and Guests, was so subversive that the government considered arresting him. He eventually left Czechoslovakia and lived in Germany and later on in the United States. Němec came back after the fall of communism and made several more films including Late Nigh Talks with Mother which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
 
About the Series:
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and end of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D.C., has made available a series of films in a program entitled The Play's the Thing: Václav Havel, Art and Politics, curated by Margaret Parsons, head of the film program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The program focuses on Václav Havel, the dissident and imprisoned dramatist who went on to become a world-renowned statesman as first president of the Czech Republic. This program is based on the places and people that Havel knew, from the influential Theatre on the Balustrade, where his theatrical career began, to his friendships with filmmakers of the Czech New Wave, and to his political ascendancy in Prague. Many of the films have been translated into English for the first time as a part of this project.

Admission is free.

Location:
The Doyle Theater, 2nd floor of the McKinley Building, School of Communication, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016

Upcoming Screenings:
Friday, November 14, 7 pm - Leaving (Odcházení)
Sunday, November 16, 4:30 pm - And the Beggar's Opera Again (A znovu Žebrácká opera) followed by The Heart above the Castle (Srdce nad hradem)