Fila/Stuchlý/Schmarc
The first half of the 1990s in Czech cinematography was marked by active exploitation. The relaxation of the political conditions and the end of the state monopoly led to an unprecedented release of all kinds of creative forces. Film learned to buck the demand dictated by the new horizons of foreign production (later also private television stations) and to give viewers what in the period of normalization were under-the-counter goods.
A trio of film critics and dramaturges Aleš Stuchlý, Vít Schmarc and Kamil Fila comment on the period of obscurities and curiosities and remark on the grammar of a panoptical privatization comedy that, in addition to boorish humour, managed to hone in on the key phenomena of the transformation era. A conceptual journey to the times when a guest threw out the head waiter and when the search for national identity simultaneously resembled a farce and a tragedy.
Something of a lecture, something of a stand-up routine; social outreach and a portrait of an era born from a visit to a cabinet of curiosities. Nostalgia is dead, long live nostalgia!
