WHEN:
Friday, February 21, 2020
6 p.m.: Culver City Happy Hour Reception
7 p.m.: Screening 

WHERE:
Wende Museum
10808 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90230

RSVP:
Screening is complimentary but RSVP is required.
Click here to RSVP or email to: RSVP@wendemuseum.org 

For more information: https://www.wendemuseum.org/programs/culver-city-happy-hour-and-friday-night-films-wende%C2%A0-killing%C2%A0-mr-devil

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Ester Krumbachová is an essential but overlooked figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Known for her bold creative vision, she worked as a screenwriter, set designer, and costume designer in collaborations with famed directors Věra Chytilová (Daisies and Fruit of Paradise), Jaromil Jireš (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), Karel Kachyňa (The Ear), and Jan Němec (A Report on the Party and the Guests and Diamonds of the Night). Not long after the release of The Killing of Mr. Devil in 1970, she was blacklisted for her work on films deemed subversive.

ABOUT THE FILM:
Krumbachová’s sole directorial effort puts a surrealist, satanic spin on the battle-of-the-sexes farce as a hot-to-trot Miss Lonelyhearts (Jirina Bohdalová) looking for a man gets more than she bargained for when she begins wooing the boorish Mr. Devil (Vladimír Mensík), an insatiable glutton who turns out to be (literally) the boyfriend from hell. A groovy mélange of ’60s lounge muzak, eye-popping art direction, and sumptuous Czech cuisine, The Murder of Mr. Devil is a subversive anti-rom-com that coolly cuts male chauvinism down to size and luxuriates in female pleasure, desire, and liberation.

1970, Czechoslovakia, 87 minutes, directed by Ester Krumbachová. In Czech with English subtitles.

The Killing of Mr. Devil is part of a series of films directed by women in conjunction with the exhibition The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists behind the Iron Curtainon view through April 5, 2020. The film is presented courtesy of the Czech National Film Archive.