Sedmikrásky (Tausendschönchen)

In this refreshing feature film, two women, Marie I and Marie II, despair at the state of the world. They turn the tables, flout conventions and dance on the patriarchy's head. With Sedmikrásky, Věra Chytilová (1929-2014) created a groundbreaking, anarchic masterpiece that explores the possibilities of film in the most creative way: Experimental both in its fragmentary narrative style and in its aesthetic ingenuity between color frenzy, clear black and white and surreal animations, the film continues to captivate with astute subversion. Chytilová, who was the first woman to study film directing at the famous Prague film school FAMU and the only woman to succeed in the Czech New Wave of the 1960s (like her colleague Agnès Varda in the French Nouvelle Vague), was banned from working by the communist government in 1969 because of her films, which were classified as “antisocial”, but this was lifted at her request in 1975. (A.P.)