Jiří Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains

Jiří Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains PDF Author: Josef Škvorecký
Publisher: Boulder [Colo.] : East European Monographs : Distribution by Columbia University Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
A work on contemporary Czechoslovak cinematography focusing on the celebrated director Jiri Menzel's classic film "Closely Watched Train" in the context of communist Czechoslovak mores and restrictions.

Jiří Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains

Jiří Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains PDF Author: Josef Škvorecký
Publisher: Boulder [Colo.] : East European Monographs : Distribution by Columbia University Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
A work on contemporary Czechoslovak cinematography focusing on the celebrated director Jiri Menzel's classic film "Closely Watched Train" in the context of communist Czechoslovak mores and restrictions.

All My Cats

All My Cats PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811228967
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
A literary master’s story about the aggravations and great joys of cats, from “a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humor and a hushed tenderness of detail” (Julian Barnes) In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal bought a cottage in Kersko. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his time between Prague and his country retreat, where he wrote and tended to a community of feral cats. Over the years, his relationship to cats grew deeper and more complex, becoming a measure of the pressures, both private and public, that impinged on his life as a writer. All My Cats, written in 1983 after a serious car accident, is a confessional memoir, the chronicle of an author who becomes overwhelmed. As he is driven to the brink of madness by the dilemmas created by his indulgent love for the animals, there are episodes of intense brutality as he controls the feline population. Yet in the end, All My Cats is a book about Hrabal’s relationship to nature, about the unlikely sources of redemption that come to him unbidden, like a gift from the cosmos—and about love.

I Served the King of England

I Served the King of England PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216876
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Chronicles the experiences of Ditie, who rises from busboy to hotel owner in World War II Prague, and whose life is shaped by the fate of his country before, during, and after the conflict.

Closely Watched Trains

Closely Watched Trains PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810112780
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most beloved and accessible works. Closely Watched Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Milos Hrma, a timid young railroad apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. Day after day as he watches trains fly by, he torments himself with the suspicion that he himself is being watched and with fears of impotency. Hrma finally affirms his manhood and, with a sense of peace and purpose he has never known before, heroically confronts a trainload of Nazis.

Betwixt and Between

Betwixt and Between PDF Author: David Johnston
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443815934
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Betwixt and Between: place and cultural translation examines the often fraught relationship between conceptions of place and the attempt to ‘translate’ them critically, politically and ethnographically for native and non-native audiences. Examining translation in a number of key contemporary geo-political contexts, including Northern Ireland, Venezuela, India, Italy, Canada, Germany, France, and the Middle East, and in a variety of genres, including poetry, drama, film, television advertising and the novel, in multiple languages, Betwixt and Between argues for the curiously fruitful dislocation of translation as a discourse and practice. Contributors argue that, by attending to the curiously placeless place of the translator, translation studies might better police the quiet pieties of nationalism, ethnic singularity and cultural homogeneity which have so destructively determined the politics of the last two centuries and which threaten to overwhelm our understanding of current cultural and political antagonisms.

The Death of Mr. Baltisberger

The Death of Mr. Baltisberger PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127016
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Originally published as The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, the fourteen stories in Romance showcase the breadth of Bohumil Hrabal’s considerable gifts: his humor of the grotesque, his often surprising warmth, and his hard-edged, fast-paced style. In the story "Romance," a plumber’s apprentice and a gypsy girl reach toward a tentative connection across the chasm that separates their worlds. Another unlikely love story, "World Cafeteria," features a romance between a young man whose girlfriend has just committed suicide and a bride whose husband lands in jail on their wedding night. The tone turns to the absurd in "The Death of Mr. Baltisberger," where a crippled ex-motorcyclist and three people he meets at the track exchange wildly improbably reminiscences, while a fatal Grand Prix motorcycle race rages around them. Hrabal’s psychological insight into quotidian interactions saturates stories such as "A Dull Afternoon," where a mysterious, self-absorbed stranger disrupts the psychic calm of a neighborhood tavern and becomes the silent catalyst for an unwanted truth. Throughout the collection, noted translator Michael Henry Heim captures the quirky speech patterns and idiosyncratic takes on life that have made Hrabal’s characters an indispensable part of world literature.

Traditions in World Cinema

Traditions in World Cinema PDF Author: Linda Badley
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813538747
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The core volume in the Traditions in World Cinema series, this book brings together a colourful and wide-ranging collection of world cinematic traditions - national, regional and global - all of which are in need of introduction, investigation and, in some cases, critical reassessment. Topics include: German expressionism, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, British new wave, Czech new wave, Danish Dogma, post-Communist cinema, Brazilian post-Cinema Novo, new Argentine cinema, pre-revolutionary African traditions, Israeli persecution films, new Iranian cinema, Hindi film songs, Chinese wenyi.

Avant-garde to New Wave

Avant-garde to New Wave PDF Author: Jonathan L. Owen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857451278
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The cultural liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s produced many artistic accomplishments, not least the celebrated films of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw filmmakers use their new freedom to engage with traditions of the avant-garde, especially Surrealism. This book explores the avant-garde's influence over the New Wave and considers the political implications of that influence. The close analysis of selected films, ranging from the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains to the aesthetically challenging Daisies, is contextualized by an account of the Czech avant-garde and a discussion of the films' immediate cultural and political background.

Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia

Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia PDF Author: Gorana Ognjenovic
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030658325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
​“This book is very timely: the instrumentalization of history for political goals has become a pressing issue and worrisome feature of many polities, to the point of challenging even the most consolidated democracies. Focusing on Yugoslavia’s fragile successor states, the authors explore plurifold analytical levels, including local, regional, transnational, European and global perspectives. The authors comprehensively demonstrate how politicizing history, in the postwar and postcommunist societies of what was once Yugoslavia, has prevented both reconciliation and democratization.” —Sabine Rutar, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Germany “Ognjenovic and Jozelic focus here on the former Yugoslavia before and after its fragmentation to explore and evaluate the various uses of histories by nationalists, both those who promoted ‘federal nationalism’ and those who peddle specific local nationalisms in successor states. The book deals specifically with the Western Balkans, but these developments have their parallels in many other parts of the world, and the book will be useful well beyond the region on which the study is based.” —Paul Mojzes, Professor Emeritus, Rosemont College, USA “The former Yugoslavia has become a battlefield for the ‘Memory Wars’, in spite of the wealth of judicially established facts and available evidences gathered about the atrocities in the region, and various initiatives aimed at dealing with the past and efforts at transitional justice. Focusing on three periods of Yugoslav history – the Second World War, socialist Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav wars of 1991–2001 – the contributors show that despite these efforts to deal with the past, sustainable peace and reconciliation across ethnic and religious groups remain a distant aim.” —Marijana Toma, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Serbia This book analyzes how nationalists in the former Yugoslavia have politicized history to further their political agendas, retaining and prolonging conflict among different cultural and religious groups, and impeding the process of lasting reconciliation. It explores how narratives have been (mis)used, drawing on examples from all of the former Yugoslav republics. With contributors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, it provides a vital assessment of how nationalists have attempted to (re)shape public collective memory and relativize facts.

1948 and 1968 – Dramatic Milestones in Czech and Slovak History

1948 and 1968 – Dramatic Milestones in Czech and Slovak History PDF Author: Laura Cashman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317999622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This volume has been published to coincide with the anniversaries of two significant milestones in Czech and Slovak history – the establishment of communist rule in 1948 and the Prague Spring of 1968 – and in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’. Given the ultimate failure of the communist system, these events and their legacy for Czech and Slovak society and politics merit continued study, particularly given the wealth of new data made available when state and Party archives were finally opened in the 1990s. The essays in this volume, by witnesses, historians and social scientists from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the USA, UK and Australia offer a reappraisal of those turbulent events. They present new and original research, based on information from archives which were not opened until after 1990 and which is not yet available to audiences who do not speak Czech or Slovak. This volume will, therefore, be of interest to both specialists and general readers who are curious to learn more about these events. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.