Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s durational documentary CZECHMATE—IN SEARCH OF JIŘÍ MENZEL (2018) will screen this weekend at the Hammer.

Dungarpur’s friendship with Menzel “resulted in this astonishingly detailed and probing documentary on Menzel’s life and career, postwar Czechoslovak cinema, the New Wave and political turmoil leading up to the Velvet Revolution, and the ever resilient Czech cultural identity.”

Interviews with Menzel, Miloš Forman, Agnieszka Holland, Ivan Passer, Věra Chytilová, Emir Kusturica, and many others “illuminate deftly chosen film clips, historical footage, and original contemporary views of places immortalized in Menzel’s films.”*

The eight-hour screening will include 15- and 30-minute breaks.

 

CZECHMATE—IN SEARCH OF JIŘÍ MENZEL, Sunday, September 16, at 2 pm.*

LARK ON A STRING—THE FILMS OF JIŘÍ MENZEL, through September 29.

Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles.

Image credit: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur