| This event is
presented in cooperation with the Czech Center, New York, the Consulate General of the
Czech Republic, Los Angeles, the National Film Archive, Prague, the French Institute,
Prague, and Musee Louvre. Sponsored by Czech Airlines and George Gund III. Home
SCHEDULE
MEMBERSHIP
TICKETS
EGYPTIAN THEATRE |
|
Friday, November 10 –
8:00 PM
Saturday, November 11 – 8:00 PM
2 Nights Only – Czech Silent Film Classic with
Live Orchestra!!
EROTIKON, 1929, Czechoslovakia, 87 min. Recently restored by the Czech National
Film Archive (based on a previously unknown, uncensored print of the film), director Gustav
Machaty’s EROTIKON is a lost treasure of sexually uninhibited filmmaking.
Yugoslavian beauty Ita Rina stars as Andrea, a trusting country girl who blossoms (and
then some) under the touch of worldly visitor Olaf Fjord. After he abandons her, Rina
endures single motherhood and marriage to another man, all the while nursing an
overwhelming passion for her first lover. An assistant to both Griffith and von Stroheim
in the early 1920’s, Machaty is best known for his 1933 film ECSTASY, featuring a
pre-Hollywood Hedy Lamarr. EROTIKON reveals him as a tremendously fluid filmmaker, using a
handheld camera in one scene to capture the wild, dizzying joy of a young woman’s
first sexual experience. Our screenings will feature a new score for the film by noted
Czech composer Jan Klusák, and conducted by Štepán Konícek and members of the
Prague FISYO Symphony Orchestra.
Special Ticket Price for EROTIKON: $12.00 General, $10.00
Cinematheque Members.
Sunday, November 12 – 5:00 PM
As our calendar goes to print,
we’ve just learned that we’ll be able to screen EROTIKON director Gustav
Machaty’s two great erotic masterpieces from the sound era, courtesy of the National
Film Archive in Prague and the Czech Center:
ECSTASY
(EXTASE), 1933, 87 min. A ravishing, pre-Hollywood Hedy
Lamarr (then known as Hedy Kiesler) stars as a young woman who marries a wealthy, but
much older man – when he proves to be impotent, she flings herself into an adulterous
affair with a handsome civil engineer. Lamarr’s infamous nude scenes turned this into
one of the most scandalous films of the 1930’s, but it’s her luminous screen
presence – and Machaty’s remarkable gift for capturing the moth-like flutterings
of the human heart – that make ECSTASY an intoxicating experience.
FROM
SATURDAY TO SUNDAY (ZE SOBOTY NA NEDELI), 1931, 85 min.
Starring Magda Maderova, L.H. Struna. Call it SEX IN THE CITY, 1930’s Czech style:
two female secretaries head out for a Saturday night on the town – they dance, get
drunk, meet a pair of ne’er-do-well skirt-chasers, and learn the high price of true
love, in Machaty’s tender, unadorned look at the unexpected collisions between
strangers. "The film’s credits provide ample proof that in prewar
Czechoslovakia, the avant-garde made significant contributions to mainstream production:
Jaroslav Jezek, the founder of Czech jazz, wrote the excellent score; the movie was
coscripted by Surrealist poet Vitezlav Nezval; its art director was experimental filmmaker
Alexander Hammid." – Elliott Stein, San Francisco Film Festival.
Regular ticket price of $7.00 General, $5.00 Members for
Nov. 12th program. |