PostED ON OCTOBER 19 2022

Every day, Lumière shines the spotlight on a little-known filmmaker and a movie worth discovering; doing justice to these forgotten films in the history of cinema is also the role of the Lumière Film Festival.

Who is he?

Martin Hollý (1931-2004), a Slovakian filmmaker whose astounding western filmed in the Tatra Mountains, ‘Night Riders’, was screened at the 2020 festival. Film dictionaries praise his 'robust realism’ and his taste for ‘aesthetic renewal’. But who remembers? His work for film and television only crosses borders today thanks to the restoration work carried out by the Slovak archives. Did the separation help in this regard?

Un cas particulier, 1964

His film at the Lumière Film Festival?

Darker than dark, ‘Prípad pre obhájcu’ details the workings of the police and justice system in a small Slovak town. Accused of the rape and murder of a teenage girl, a young man is quickly imprisoned and found guilty. The lawyer defending him has doubts about the methods that led to his conviction... This was a time when Czechoslovakia was loosening the Soviet yoke and asking dangerous questions about the truth of its institutions.

What makes it worth discovering?

Because the description of a small local ‘nomenklatura’, judge, prosecutor, inspector, lawyer, content with the status quo, is striking in its critical virulence. One is reminded of the characters in Havel's early plays, conspiring intellectuals in a faltering regime. Because he left the FAMU, Prague's famous film school, to return to his native Slovakia, Martin Hollý never achieved the level of fame of Forman, Herz or Jires, filmmakers who heralded the spring. It is most unfair.

A. F .

Screenings:

Prípad pre obhájcu byMartin Hollý (1964, 1h30)

Institut Lumière: Wednesday, October 19, 11:15am | Cinéma Opéra: Thursday, October 20, 7:45pm