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To mark the publication by Karolinum Press of the first English translation by Mark Corner of Jan Procházka’s masterpiece, David Vaughan and Peter Hames discuss both, the book and the film at 6.30pm, followed by a screening of the 1970 classic at 7pm.
The Ear – Ucho in Czech – is one of the greatest of all Czech films. It was the culmination of ten years of fruitful cooperation between the director Karel Kachyňa and screenwriter Jan Procházka. The film was completed in 1970, but in the oppressive atmosphere after the 1968 Soviet invasion it was banned immediately and was not seen by audiences in Czechoslovakia until twenty years later. It is not hard to see why. It is set in the period of the Stalinist purges in 1950s Czechoslovakia. A senior government official Ludvík and his wife Anna come back from a drunken party at the ministry to find that their house has been bugged. A gripping psychological drama follows, as they await a knock on the door.
Jan Procházka was one of the most popular and prolific Czech writers of the 1960s, closely identified with the reforms and growing artistic freedoms of the time, and the novella Ear is perhaps his greatest work. It combines the economy of Hemingway with the tension of Hitchcock, set in a stifling totalitarian environment.
Admission £7 see booking link below
David Vaughan is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and university lecturer. He wrote the afterword to the English translation. His debut novel Slyšte můj hlas (2014) won the Czech Book Prize readers’ award in 2015. The book has been published in English by Jantar Publishing as Hear My Voice (2019). He is also author of Battle for the Airwaves (2008), a study of the role of the media in the run-up to WWII. For eight years he was editor-in-chief of Radio Prague, having previously been the BBC’s Prague correspondent.
Peter Hames is visiting professor in film studies at Staffordshire University. His books include The Czechoslovak New Wave(2005), Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition (2010), The Best of Slovak Cinema(2018) and, as editor, The Cinema of Central Europe (2004), The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer (2008), and Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 (with Catherine Portuges, 2013). He recently edited two special issues of Studies in Eastern European Cinema on Věra Chytilová (2018-19) and has contributed to a forthcoming book on the Barrandov studios.
Part of the season celebrating the 30thanniversary of the Czech Centre London that highlights the most successful past projects.
The film was screened as part of The Eye of the Camera: A Profile of Karel Kachyňa, a retrospective organised by the Czech Centre in March 2003 in Riverside Studios in London.
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