“Daisies is a brightly colored surrealist comedy starring a couple of chicks in search of kicks.”—B. Ruby Rich
A landmark example of the Czech New Wave intersecting with feminist cinema, Věra Chytilová’s Daisies is a playfully surreal and absurdist romp that follows two young women setting out to prank the patriarchy that controls the world they live in. Seeking pleasure and debauchery, they run rampant through banquet halls and nightclubs, staging farcical scenes of social rebellion. (1966, Czechoslovakia, Czech with English subtitles, 35mm, 76 min.)
Screened in conjunction with the exhibition Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s.
Bio
Věra Chytilová (Czechoslovakia, 1929–2014) was a key figure of the Czech New Wave with her own inventive and subversive approach to filmmaking. Chytilová was the first woman to study directing at Prague’s Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts. She graduated in 1962 at age 28 and made her first avant-garde film, A Bagful of Fleas. In 1966, her second feature, the rebellious and feminist Daisies, played a major role in reinvigorating Czechoslovak cinema and challenging filmmaking conventions. Soon after, Communist Party censorship blacklisted Chytilová, preventing her from directing until a decade later, after which she went on to direct more than 20 works for film and television.
Content and Accessibility Notes
This film includes a brief scene in which the main characters’ faces are covered in soot, resembling blackface.
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