Paid subscribers get two extra issues a month. One of those is ET Watch Home, a monthly movie essay. This year, each of the movies is a Czech (or, if you prefer, Czechoslovak) New Wave staple. This month, we have Věra Chytilová’s Something Different (1963).
The Czech New Wave was very male dominated, but Věra Chytilová would not be dominated by men. She was one of the older ones in the Czech New Wave cohort, and Jiří Menzel one of the younger, but they were friends, and she would tell him after class about what idiots men were. One story goes that during the period of normalization, in the 1970s, with authorities cracking down on what could and couldn’t be made, she was able to keep working by being like I SURE HOPE NOBODY IN THIS COUNTRY IS SEXIST ENOUGH TO KEEP ME FROM WORKING.
Chytilová is best known for Daisies. There is good reason for this. Daisies is a singular achievement from a singular filmmaker.
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