Documentary Mondays, Fiction Tuesdays: Contemporary and classic European films screened at Czech Center in Bucharest

Documentary Mondays and Fiction Tuesdays, the programs of the Czech Center in Bucharest, return between November 10 and November 25 with screenings of six contemporary and classic European films.

Documentary Mondays, the Czech Center's longest-running film program, proposes documentaries that reflect on the present, memory, trauma, and the ways in which we relate to the world. Fiction Tuesdays will showcase three films by director Václav Vorlíček, an essential figure of Czechoslovak fantastic comedy, from cult fairy tales to subversive political satire.

The selection of this November edition connects the two programs "through the way in which film records, distorts, reconstructs, or fabricates reality," the organizers explain. The documentaries discuss meaning, vulnerability, the pandemic, memory, and film heritage; the feature films recall cinema's freedom to explore the impossible.

The productions screened as part of Documentary Mondays are Peter Kerekes's Wishing on a Star, Vít Klusák and Marika Pecháčková's The Great Nothing, and Vladimir Kressl, Judit Elek, Krsto Papić, and Slavomir Popovici's The Shadows of History.

The screening of the documentary The Great Nothing will be followed by a Q&A session with co-director Marika Pecháčková, and the screening of the anthology Shadows of History will be followed by a discussion with its curator, Adina Brădeanu.

The Václav Vorlíček films screened at Fiction Tuesdays are The Girl on the Broomstick, How to Drown Dr. Mráček, the Lawyer, and Three Wishes for Cinderella.

Entrance to the screenings is free, within available seating. The films are screened with English subtitles.

(Illustration: the Czech Center)