Moravian Hellas
1964 · 33 MIN · IMDB 7.4 · 35 VOTES · DIR. Karel Vachek
Overview
Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.
Dialogue Timeline — 406 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:00:07 Moravian Hellas
00:02:59 These silk threads have to be there using this wee pendulum
00:04:17 because the parents don't want the girls to go into employment
00:05:32 Americans always buy lots of our products.
00:06:34 and more eye-pleasing than those from previous centuries.
00:07:42 Mr. Klásek met an old man in the village and said:
00:09:05 or makes fun of us Slovaks, right?
00:10:10 and who are raising two generations of birds. l get pleasure from it.
00:11:28 plates, but if someone wants the Strážnice ornament on it
00:12:52 But today they colour everýthing, imagine that!
00:14:08 Jesus Christ, if only we'd sell it all.
00:15:17 l like them myself and l think that all our people do
00:16:51 Recently many teachers and educated people have joined this business.
00:18:09 Jožka Severín's daughter had painted this house
00:19:33 He could have a nice house, even had a wooden cottage built
00:20:44 The kitchen has to be all tarted up, plates taken off the walls
00:21:46 among folk artists and l started to compose songs.
00:22:59 and in those days wasn't possible to attend the school as today
00:24:17 Look, today the Strážnice Festival takes place.
00:25:51 but only to be read after my death.
00:28:45 But l'm also a folk storyteller and many people know me very well.
00:30:04 to ensure it's all right, that most people enjoy it
00:31:14 lt seems to me like some slowly dying cow
00:32:58 it's more for those people who wish to profit from it.