In the 1970s, when the Czech filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný was struggling in exile from his Communist-run homeland, he came to the German writer Heinrich Böll for guidance. Böll offered a simple reminder:
“He said three words: ‘Patience, Vojtěch, patience,'” Mr. Jasný, 79, recalled recently.
Patience was a necessity for the director, who lived through World War II, Communist rule, exile, and all the accompanying turmoil before alighting in America in 1984. Beginning Friday, Anthology Film Archives will celebrate Mr. Jasný, whom compatriot Milos Forman dubbed “the spiritual father of the Czech New Wave,” with a weeklong, seven-film series. Bookended by his 1958 debut, “Desire,” and a 1999 documentary shot in Washington Heights, the heartening program also offers the opportunity to see Mr. Jasný’s best-known feature on the big screen: the gorgeously shot chronicle of a village sighing under collectivization, “All My Good Countrymen,” which was banned the moment Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.
more from the NY Sun here.