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Squandered Sunday
(Zabitá nedele)

Screening on Film
Directed by Drahomíra Vihanová.
With Ivan Palúch, Míla Myslíková, Otakar Zebrák.
Czechoslovakia, 1969, 35mm, black & white, 77 min.
Czech with English subtitles.
Print source: Národní filmový archiv

An unjustly forgotten treasure of the Czech New Wave, Squandered Sunday was shot in 1969 (only months after Warsaw Pact tanks invaded Prague) and did not see the light of day until the end of communism. FAMU graduate Drahomíra Vihanová chronicles a day in the life of depressed alcoholic army officer Ernest, whose existential despair, anxiety and directionless anger paint a sharp contrast to the exuberant, colorful satires one might be accustomed to from ‘60s Czechoslovakia. One of the Wave’s darkest titles, the film is also stacked with biblical references, untranslatable linguistic quips and Brechtian wallbreakers straight from Godard. Upon completion, the film was promptly bunkered until 1990; Vihanová was banned from feature filmmaking, moving instead into TV documentary. Underrecognized to this day, she wholly belongs in the pantheon of her country’s great women filmmakers, alongside Chytilová and Ester Krumbachová.

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