ミラン・クンデラ原作の『冗談』（ヤロミル・イレシュ監督）の
上映会をギャラリー、アーキペラゴにて開催します。

小説が発表されたのは1965年、映画の公開は1969年で、
だいたい80分くらいの映画です。

日程：10月28日
時間：15時から
字幕：英語

無料です。
300円程度でパンフレットを用意する予定です。
上映後にちょっとしたおしゃべりの場でも設けようかと考えています。

15人ほどしか入れないので、予約制にします。
参加ご希望の方は私まで人数をご連絡ください。
返信が遅くなることがありますが、予めご了承ください。

非常にわかりにくい所にあるので、
下記HPで場所をご確認ください。
http://www.archi-pelago.net/

■映画について
Jaromil Jires was distrusted due to the overt critique of the Czech state and socialist realism in his film, The Joke. Made in 1968, The Joke was released in 1969 and banned immediately. The film was even stricken from Jires's official filmography, an unusual occurrence, as even censored films generally appeared on the director's filmography issued by Barrandov Studios, the nationalized film studios in Prague.

The Joke is based on disillusioned Party member Milan Kundera's 1965 novel of the same name and is unabashed in its criticism of 1950s' socialist politics. The film contrasts large gatherings of sign-wielding youth who believe in love, happiness, and a Cominform-defined historical materialism (a visual allusion to the large gatherings of the Prague Spring) with the story of Ludvik Jahn (Josef Somr), a professor who is expelled from the Communist Party as a student and spends six years in a labor camp. His older self watches as the earlier events unfold; flashback shots are countered with present images of Ludvik looking on with an expression of fatigue. This structure suggests the collapsing of time and the immediacy of Ludvik's past experience, even within his comfortable present.

These memories return after an interview with sycophantic journalist Helena (Jana Ditetova). By chance, Ludvik finds out that Helena is married to Pavel Zemank (Ludek Munzar), the nemesis who flushed him out of the Party. Ludvik, an inveterate ladies' man, develops a plot to cuckold Pavel by seducing Helena. His plan falls flat, however, when he and an enamored Helena run into Pavel with his 20-year-old girlfriend. Ludvik discovers that Helena and Pavel have been separated for some time, rendering his machinations impotent. Helena then becomes Ludvik's surrogate for revenge, as the dandified Pavel remains unscathed and self-satisfied.

Throughout, it is obvious that Ludvik has been ruined, and is as impotent as his attempt at revenge. His mean-spirited prank with Helena appears the last refuge of a man whose anger is deeply ingrained, impossible to direct, and ultimately indefinable. After beating Helena's assistant, a teenager who is in love with her and has come to defend her honor, Ludvik says, "I'm sorry. It wasn't you. It wasn't you." Nor does it even seem to be Pavel. Rather, like the teenage girls in Daisies, Ludvik has been pushed into a corner by social circumstance. Due to its depiction of the Party as a repressive force and its sarcastic derision of the Party members, The Joke, unsurprisingly, did not sit well with Czechoslovakia's newly formed government in 1969.