THE CZECHOSLOVAK NEW WAVE

In the late 1960s, Czech and Slovak films dominated the festival circuit and, in the space of three years, won two Hollywood Academy Awards (A Shop on the High Street and Closely Observed Trains). At the same time, Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball gained an enthusiastic following. Yet these were only the most visible aspects of a movement that extended from realism to surrealism and to the experimental (and feminist) works of Vera Chytilova. This study of the most significant film movement in post-war Central and East European cinema examines the origins and development of the Czech New Wave and the Slovak New Wave of the late 1960s against a background of the political and cultural developments that led to the Prague Spring of 1968. The book also examines key formative aspects of the history of Czech and Slovak cinema from the 1930s onward. This second edition has been fully updated to include accounts of films that were banned at the time of the original research or had to wait twenty years for their release. There is also a consideration of the work of those ‘New Wave’ directors who were able to continue their work in the years following the Soviet invasion and a discussion of its significance in the context of production since the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989.

January 2005
320 pages

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Peter Hames is Honorary Research Associate in Film and Media Studies at Staffordshire University. He has published widely in the area of East Central European cinema including, as editor, The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy (2008) and The Cinema of Central Europe (2004).

‘Hames’s The Czechoslovak New Wave is by far the best work written on the subject to date, not only in the English language, but in any language, and can be considered as the definitive reference work on the Czech New Wave… Anybody interested in the study and understanding of the Czech New Wave should read, or indeed, start by reading Hames’s volume.'
– Cesar Ballester, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

'This new edition of Hames’ book succeeds at the daunting task of updating the discussion of the Czech “new wave”, of filmmaking and bringing to a broad readership a narrow field of inquiry … Recommended.'
– Choice

'Vividly evokes the most exciting and boisterous decade in the history of Czechoslovak filmmaking ... the most meticulous study of any national cinema to have appeared in recent years.'
– Vaclav Taborsky, Canadian Slavonic Papers

‘In analysing this complex artistic-social phenomenon, Mr Hames illuminates an important episode in modern film history ... his descriptions of the marvellously ageless films are accurate and exhaustive.'
– Josef Skvorecky, Sight and Sound