葬礼

The heroine of this drama about injustice during the collectivization of the Czech countryside is a proud widow, who arranges a magnifi cent funeral for her recently deceased husband. The funeral ceremony for this honourable farmer who had resisted the state-sanctioned liquidation of farmers and landholders is transformed into a manifestation of resistance against the Communist overlords. This story of the struggle against injustice was based on a novel by the dissident writer Eva KantÛrková, whose official publication was also prohibited during “normalization”. Sirov˘’s best film has the outline of a Classical tragedy and is framed by suggestive shots of the countryside. The film’s long-delayed premiere in 1990 was broadcast on television and attended by President Václav Havel. During “normalization” the director Zdenek Sirov˘ (1932-1995) primarily made his living doing film dubbing. He did make a number of quite ordinary adventure films and after the fall of Communism he shot an adaptation of the popular satire The Black Barons about conditions in the Communist military in the 1950s. During the final years of his life, cut short by disease, he was a respected teacher at Prague’s Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts.