Bohemia Docta or the Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy)

Mushrooms and castles figure prominently in this characteristically wide-angle, wide-ranging film essay from Karel Vachek, offering a labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. "Working from an unrealized screenplay of the 1970s and the ideas of the 17th-century historian Bohuslav Balbin, Vachek introduces, at irregular intervals, Bohemian castles, various kinds of Czech mushrooms, a lost pro-Communist opera, and the rock group Plastic People of the Universe" (National Gallery of Art, Washington). "Its four-plus hours open wide to embrace the whole history of Czech art and literature" (Dennis Harvey, SF360). "The entire movie is one great Dadaist poem" (Monika Valentová). "The world at the end of this decade is even less cheerful than it was at its beginning, at least in the Czech Republic. It’s really deathly here. In my opinion, it’s just as deathly here now as it was before 1989. The powers are arranged differently and it isn’t as dangerous. But it’s deathly here. That means that I’m engaging in this world to stir things up, to bring some thought into things myself. I couldn’t have pulled this off before. Now I’ve allowed myself to do it" (Karel Vachek). Colour, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 254 mins. + intermission.