On January 5, 1968, liberal reformist Alexander Dubček was elected leader of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, inaugurating a series of democratization and decentralization efforts that came to be known as the Prague Spring—a step toward what Dubček famously envisaged as “socialism with a human face.” On August 21 that year, the hopeful season ended tragically with Warsaw Pact tanks invading the country, KGB officers arresting Dubček and nearly all reforms being repealed by a newly consolidated authoritarian chapter of the Party.

This series assembles four remarkable and heterogeneous films made in the immediate aftermath of the Prague Spring’s violent suppression. 1969 and 1970 were nothing if not dissonant, contradictory years: suspended between stultifying normalization and the still-smoldering fervor of freedom movements, Czech cinema of the time is saturated with artistic unruliness in the face of a conservative return to order. This selection is also something of a tribute to three great women filmmakers: Ester Krumbachová (who worked on three of the films on display), Drahomíra Vihanová (whose opus remains scandalously overlooked to this day), and the inimitable Věra Chytilová. Whether in the mode of fantasy, naturalism, madcap parody or biblical myth, cinema in 1970 Prague was a central arena in which post-Spring realities, anxieties and dreams were acted out and given life, free of worldly restraints yet never of government censors. – Nace Zavrl