Pearls of the Deep
Perličky na dně
Based on short stories by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal and considered a manifesto of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this anthology film includes works by Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm and Jaromil Jireš. The revolutionary generation of filmmakers emerged in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and had a great impact on the country’s cultural landscape.
Impostors, a piece by Němec, focuses on two eccentric old men in a tiny hospital ward. They boast about the years of their youth, telling incredible stories, but are these recollections real or fictitious? With only two actors and just one small space with empty walls and two beds, Němec is able to deliver a poignant and hilarious insight into the peculiar nature of memory and time. Already in that early piece he praises imagination and mystification as the only tools to ward off the decaying reality and fear of mortality, introducing a motif that would become central in his later works.
Film details
- Country of production
- Czechoslovakia
- Year
- 1965
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2017
- Length
- 107"
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
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