Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy

The name of Karel Vachek, cinessayisthors des normes, is rarely mentioned when talk turns to cinema’s victims in the Prague Spring’s suppression and the ČSSR’s subsequent ‘Normalisation’ process. After the suppression of his first feature, Spřízněni volbou (1968), it wasn’t until 1992 that he was able to release another film. Nový Hyperion aneb Volnost, rovnost, bratrství is in some ways a longer version of his debut.

In the decades since, Vachek released five more works. These caustically epic films offer insights into the Czech Republic’s development as an independent nation. Or more precisely: the Czech Republic becomes an especially curious example of the way the world has turned under Liberalism. Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy feels like the sum total of Vachek’s cinema: a classification-defying behemoth of a film, ironic, ferocious, ballsy – the way public intellectuals rarely are these days.

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