Eighteen films that were banned decades ago in Czechoslovakia are scheduled to be screened during this year’s Golden Horse Classic Film Festival, organizers said yesterday.
The country’s “new wave” cinema dating from the 1960s to the 1970s will be presented in an exhibition entitled The Golden Age of Czechoslovak Cinema.
Some of the avant garde films of the season that will be screened have the dark humor and surreal imagination of the country, said the organizers of the festival.
The country’s creative arts community was suppressed after the Soviet invasion of then-Czechoslovakia in 1968 and crushed a brief period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring.
The festival has planned 38 films shot during the Czech New Wave, including six short animations. Eighteen of the films were banned until Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic in 1993.
The films were well preserved during the authoritarian period, organizers said, adding that half of the films have been restored and will be shown in 4K digital format.
Among the films that will be screened are his early works Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus director Milos Forman, who was an essential part of the country’s new wave period, and Jiri Menzel, who made dozens of films from 1960 to 2013.
Twenty-seven filmmakers from the Czech New Wave will be screened, the organizer said.
The festival will take place at the Shin Kong Cinemas in Taiwan’s Ximen District (西門) from July 22 to August 11 and at the theater’s Taichung Cinema from August 3 to 14, with tickets on sale today.
The Classic Festival is one of the three annual events organized by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. The other two are the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival.
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