The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
Marketa Lazarová
When
Wed 24 Sep 2025
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Often proclaimed the greatest Czech film ever made, this dense, hallucinatory medieval epic, pitting clan against clan and Christians against Pagans, is a rush of indelible, high-contrast, black-and-white ’Scope imagery, shot with an ever-prowling camera, edited furiously and restlessly switching between objective and subjective points-of-view.
Trying to keep up with the labyrinthine plot is secondary to giving into the film’s experiential potency, as Vláčil’s painstaking insistence on authentic 13th-century period detail and hardscrabble brutality is raised, by stunning atmospherics inclusive of Zdeněk Liška’s majestic choral-electronic score, to the order of the sublime.
Preceded by The City in White František Vláčil (1972) 15 mins – Unclassified 15+. A short symphony for snowbound Prague made when Vláčil was effectively blacklisted from feature-film production.
Both films courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.
About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
