Prague on Page & Screen - Prague and Czech Republic - page 636

of life in a society rapidly transiting from communism to capitalism. If the Czech
New Wave was mostly about making light of a bad situation, it wouldn't be a stretch
to say that today's films strive to make bad out of a comparatively light situation.
Films such as David Ondříček's Loners (2000), Jan Hřebejk's Up and Down
(2004), Sasha Gedeon's Return of the Idiot (1999), Bohdan Sláma's Something Like
Happiness (2005) and Petr Zelenka's Wrong Side Up (2005) are all different, yet each
explores the same familiar dark terrain of money, marital problems and shifting moral
sands.
In recent years, historical films have made a comeback, particularly films that ex-
plore WWII and the Nazi occupation. The best include director Adam Dvořák's
Lidice (2011), Hřebejk's Kawasaki Rose (2009) and Tomáš Lunák's Alois Nebel
(2010). The latter is an inventive interpretation of a graphic novel concerning a
murder committed in the final days of the war and the subsequent expulsion of Czech
Germans.
Running against the grain has been director Jan Svěrák, who continues to make
big-budget films that have attracted international attention. In 1996 he took home the
country's first Oscar since the 1960s - for the film Kolja .
BEST POST-'89 CZECH LITERATURE
More and more books by younger Czech writers are finding English-language
publishers. Here's a short list of some of our favourites:
» The Seven Churches (Miloš Urban, 1997) A brilliant modern-day Gothic
murder story set among the seven major churches of Prague's Nové Město by
one of the rising stars of Czech literature.
» All This Belongs to Me (Petra Hůlová, 2009) Hůlová's debut novel chronicles
the lives of three generations of women living in Mongolia. It was a local sensa-
tion on its first Czech printing in 2002.
» Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia (Michal Viewegh, 1996) Humorously captures
the early years of newly capitalist Prague.