126 / BD 22 A Case for a Rookie Hangman

[Bikey]

Mondo Digital choose Juráček's A CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN as one of their 'Top 25 Releases of 2019'

[Bikey]

Delighted and amazed to wake up to the news that our A CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN release is the joint winner of 'Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film' prize at this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato Awards in Bolgona!! Once again we are honoured.

The Jury said:
"Another rare pearl of the fabulous Czechoslovakian spring re-emerges thanks to the English publisher Second Run. The second and last work by Pavel Juráček, who is considered the ideological godfather of the New Wave. A sui generis adaptation of 'Gulliver's Travels', with influences from Kafka, Swift and Carroll. A powerful metaphor for the crushing of freedom, which began before and ended after the invasion of Soviet tanks in Prague in August 1968."

[hearthesilence]

Delighted and amazed to wake up to the news that our A CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN release is the joint winner of 'Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film' prize at this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato Awards in Bolgona!! Once again we are honoured.

The Jury said:
"Another rare pearl of the fabulous Czechoslovakian spring re-emerges thanks to the English publisher Second Run. The second and last work by Pavel Juráček, who is considered the ideological godfather of the New Wave. A sui generis adaptation of 'Gulliver's Travels', with influences from Kafka, Swift and Carroll. A powerful metaphor for the crushing of freedom, which began before and ended after the invasion of Soviet tanks in Prague in August 1968."

Picked this up myself in the last Arrow sale. Absolutely love it and I wasn't aware of it until you guys reissued it.

[domino harvey]

• Black and White Sylva (Cernobílá Sylva, 1961)

I didn’t care for Josef Kilian or the feature (this kind of free association “narrative” is one of my least favorite things), but I LOVED this short, and couldn’t believe it was sidelined. The idea of a propaganda character coming to life and only being capable of filtering real world stimuli through the limited perimeters of state-approved messaging is a great comic set-up, and that specificity stops it from being compared unfavorably to Purple Rose of Cairo. I wish the main film or featured short had this film’s clarity of purpose!

[knives]

I’ll grumble similarly to Dom. I appreciate well done stream of consciousness (and do like the featured short), but this doesn’t seem to go beyond being a vibe and for all the emphasis on Swift the connection felt very surface level to me.