CzechMate: In Search of Jiri Menzel

CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel  (India, 2018)

This expansive and intimate, eminently engaging documentary was a labor of love by Mumbai-based archivist and filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who became enamored with Jiří Menzel’s work after seeing Closely Watched Trains as a film student at the Film and Television Institute of India. Years later, Dungarpur initiated a correspondence and eventual friendship with Menzel that resulted in this astonishingly detailed and probing documentary on Menzel’s life and career, postwar Czechoslovak cinema, the New Wave and the political turmoil leading up to the Velvet Revolution and the ever resilient Czech cultural identity. Extensive interviews with Menzel, Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, Věra Chytilová, Emir Kusturica, Agnieszka Holland and host of other cinematic luminaries and Menzel collaborators illuminate deftly chosen film clips, historical footage and original contemporary views of places immortalized in Menzel’s films.

DCP, color & b/w, in Czech, English, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish with English subtitles, 480 min. Director: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

Please note: This screening has an earlier start time and will include both a 15 minute and a 30 minute break.