And yet another jewel from the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman's 1967 classic, The Fireman's Ball. Told through the lens of the most poorly-organized party of all time, Forman is clearly commenting on how things were actually running under communist control in Czechoslovakia. It's funny and disturbing at the same time. Recommended.
Eventually I'll run through the Criterion Channel's Czech New Wave collection, at least until I give them yet another watch. One of the many things I love about the Criterion Channel is their supply of short films, often early efforts from aspiring filmmakers, which most of us would never have the opportunity to see otherwise. I particularly loved this early effort from Jires (and for some reason, maybe not o strange, I'm always drawn to works that came out the year I was born), The Hall of Lost Footsteps. It deals with the Holocaust and the threat of nuclear holocaust, and is very powerful.
Which is not to be confused with The Secret History. Here's a not particularly exciting picture of a pile of books (all Shahnameh-related) that keep me company in my little loft office. Now, if you look closer, you can make out a poorly stacked pile of papers. That's half of my Epics manuscript. Long ago I stopped referring to it as my book (someday, inshallah, I will be able to refer to it as my book) and started simply calling it my manuscript. While I would prefer that it's published someday, obviously, in other ways the key is that I set out to write it - and I wrote it. My goal is to have to have it completely finished (as much as a book, uh, manuscript, is ever finished) by my last day of this last semester. Being able to turn my head and see the stack, growing larger week by week, gives me resolution to keep pushing grinding away.
I mentioned that it was strange that I had never watched Jasny's All My Good Countrymen before. Last night I watched a film that I would have sworn that I had watched - and which the Criterion Channel assured me that I had - but of which I had absolutely no memory at all. I don't know how one would reach sixty-six years of age without ever having seen Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde, but, again, I'm from Indiana, and thus poorly educated. It tells the story of Andula (played by Jana Brejchova, in her first role), a young Czech woman working in a pretty desultory Soviet-era factory. The entire story takes place within one week, from the dream of an exciting love that might get her out of her little village to the inevitable heartbreak. I'm not a huge Milos Forman fan, but I liked this a lot, and it's definitely recommended.
Several of the Czech New Wave films I've watched recently are ones that I had first viewed a few years ago. The other night I watched a film that I had somehow never seen before: Vojtech Jasny's wonderful and bittersweet 1969 film All My Good Countrymen. It's set in a small Czechoslovakian village, which passes from the joy of pushing out the Nazis (with the assistance of the Soviet Union) to the dehumanization and sadness of Communist rule. There are so many characters who pass in and out of focus, several of them dying, all of them disillusioned. It's sort of like a Gogol novel, except much, much more emotionally gutting. Highly recommended.
My wonderful friend and former student Ines sent me this picture, which she snapped outside the shawarma stand across the street from the University of Jordan in Amman. The first stop on the Jordan trip was always a walk down the hill to the little stand. I'm sure I've posted this picture before, but I love it so much. Even considering the chaos engulfing the region, I wish I were sitting there right now.
Four weeks of the regular semester left. My students were alternately joyously engaged or sullenly disengaged this week. I have one class that is so much better than my other three that I'm tempted to manipulate my schedule so that they're the last college class I actually walk out of (it will make it seem slightly less certain that I've wasted the last forty years). The talk of me giving a going away speech, which would turn into the Gary Scudder Symposium, has reared its ugly head again. I'm honored, but the only thing I hate more than public speaking is being the center of attention, so I need to be even more deliberate in my no (although I've been pretty deliberate so far).
