Part of the BAMcinématek series New Czech Films
Fri, May 11, 2012 at 5, 9pm
NY Premiere
Directed by Vaclav Havel
With Josef Abrham, Dagmar Havlova Veskrnova, Jaroslav Dusek, Vlasta Chramostova
(2011) 95min, 35mm
Before becoming the first president of the newly free Czech Republic in 1989, the late Vaclav Havel was a great playwright. (Joseph Papp premiered all of Havel’s plays in the 1960s at the venerable Public Theater.) After leaving office, Havel returned to writing with this story of a womanizing politico in the 1970s who, ousted from office, enters a phase of his life in which he’s no longer the center of attention. This searing satire, based on Havel's play of the same name, is based as much on Shakespeare’s King Lear as on his real-life experience in politics. Havel's wife co-stars.
