Party and the Guests

Director: Jan Němec

1966 / 71min / 4K DCP

The film that would eventually lead to Němec’s political exile from Czechoslovakia and a 20-year break in his directing of theatrical features, Party and the Guests—co-written by Ester Krumbachová, then Němec’s wife—is a surreal satire in which a group of group of picnickers are beset by a gang of thuggish strangers who proceed to harass them with cruel and arbitrary tactics that would not seem unfamiliar to your average secret police organization. A bracingly bleak vision whose observations on authoritarianism—and the all-too-common human impulse to give in to it—remain vital long after the fall of the regime it was produced under.

Introduction by Irena Kovarova, Film programmer and Czech film expert on Sunday, October 20th