It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Luboš Fišer’s immaculate soundtrack music for 'Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders' ("Valerie A Týden Divu") from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative ‘Film Miracle’ that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label as well as listeners who consistently request an updated repress of this significant vinyl milestone.
Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s ‘A Week Of Kindness’ and Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers - all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist film poem to be an indelible influence - Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric.
Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is the last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’ would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories.
By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proofing his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement.
Beautifully remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. Housed in two sleeve designs (Sleeve A / Sleeve B) based on the original theatrical posters.
Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s ‘A Week Of Kindness’ and Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers - all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist film poem to be an indelible influence - Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric.
Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is the last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’ would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories.
By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proofing his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement.
Beautifully remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. Housed in two sleeve designs (Sleeve A / Sleeve B) based on the original theatrical posters.
TRACK LISTING
The Magic Yard
Talk With Grandmother
The Letter
The Sermon
Losing The Way
The Visit
The Work Of Death
Dinner
Dense Smoke
The Contract / The Wedding
The Punishment
Disquiet
Awakening
Brother And Sister
Sacrifice
The Letter 2 / Friends
In Flames
Puppets
Homeless
Questions And Answers
Confession
Forgiveness
And The Last