Love and Anarchy:
Films by Vera Chytilová and Juraj Jakubisko
Love and Anarchy reprises key works by two of the most exciting and original filmmakers from the Czech “New Wave” of the 1960s. No strangers to controversy, Vera Chytilová and Juraj Jakubisko had their share of run-ins with state officials in the sixties and seventies. Slovakian director Jakubisko, in particular, has been described as “one of the most frequently banned filmmakers ever to achieve international renown.” The film negative of his 1968 feature The Deserter and the Nomads was intentionally destroyed; his next film, Birds, Orphans, and Fools, made in 1969, was held back from release until 1990. In 1970 Jakubisko began directing a feature film entitled See You in Hell, My Friends but was prevented from finishing the film for twenty years. Chytilová, too, suffered at the hands of the authorities. Her second feature, Daisies, provoked outrage in the Czech parliament, which issued a declaration asking for its ban. Chytilová’s films, like Jakubisko’s, often expose the absurdity of “good behavior” in a world gone mad, and both directors possess a love for mixing farce and fantasy with social critique. This approach, combined with their bravura visual styles, places their work in the company of directors such as Federico Fellini, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Yuri Ilyenko, and Dusan Makavejev.