Monday, 23 July 2018, 6.30pm.
The Lexi Cinema, 194b Chamberlayne Road, Kensal Rise, London NW10 3JU
Read Carmen Gray on DAISIES’ singular subversion and stealth revolution.
Daisies. Directed by Vera Chytilová, Czech Republic, 1966, 76mins
[Click on the film title for more summer 2018 UK screening dates]
Boredom, bikinis and a blistering critique of the beauty myth. From its first seconds, Vera Chytilova’s (1929-2014) ever-fresh Daisies kicks wickedly against the pricks and feels as if it was made today.
An innovative and brilliantly absurd masterpiece of the ’60s Czech New Wave, the film was made three years before the Prague Spring but dissent is clearly in the air. Daisies follows the misadventures of two young women both called Marie (played by Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová), who rebelliously scam rich dates, cut off their own heads and wreck an official feast. The film’s anarchic attitude saw it banned by the Czech authorities and it stayed under wraps for years.
Some have called the film’s freewheeling rage against the world proto-riot grrrl, and the two Maries (defiantly unholy) are a total riot. If you haven’t caught up with this genuine feminist classic, see why it’s as thrilling now as it was fifty years ago.
+
Saute Ma Ville. Chantal Akerman, Belgium, 1968, 13mins
When she was just 18, Chantal Akerman dropped out of film school to make this disturbing look at the claustrophobia of the domestic. A caustic prelude to her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman.
With the support of the Independent Cinema Office and BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery.
