Birds, Orphans and Fools

Vtackovia, siroty a blazni

Czechoslovakia, France

1969

78 Min

Color

Slovak

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

PROD Jan Svikruha, Jan Tomaskovic

SCR Juraj Jakubisko, Karol Sidon

CAST Philippe Avron, Jirí Sýkora, Magda Vášáryová, Míla Beran, Augustín Kubán, Mikulás Ladizinsky, Jana Stehnová

The story is about three orphans who have lost their families in war. Although the two men Andrej and Yurick and the lady Marta are adults, they act foolish like children trying to live life to the fullest. They resort with their landlord and other orphans in an bombed out church that is distorted with various shelves, cupboards and animals scattered about. But the main characters can’t block out the pain of living in a war torn country, and after Yurick is put in prison and returns a year later, things will never be the same. —IMDb

Director

Juraj Jakubisko

Juraj Jakubisko (b. 30 April 1938, Kojšov, Czechoslovakia) is a Slovak film director. In his movies he managed to catch life’s most beautiful colors, unhinge the poetry behind the ordinary and to be ahead of his time without forgetting his roots.

Before entering the film industry, Jakubisko taught still photography at a Bratislava secondary school for applied arts and worked for a television in Košice. In 1960 he moved to Prague where he attended the FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts), studying direction under Václav Wasserman’s tuition. He graduated in 1965. After his studies Jakubisko worked with Alfréd Radok at the Laterna magika theater in Prague and began winning international acclaim with his experimental short films before making his first feature Crucial Years or Christ’s Years (Kristove roky, 1967).

The promising career of the young director was heavily crippled by the communist regime. He managed to complete only 3 films before he was… read more

The promising career of the young director was heavily crippled by the communist regime. He managed to complete only 3 films before he was sidetracked in the difficult period following the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion which crushed the Prague Spring reform period in Czechoslovakia. During that period, he made a few documentaries. Fortunately the situation got gradually better so that he could film Three Sacks of Cement and a Live Rooster (Tri vrecia cementu a živý kohút, 1976) although it was not released until 1978.

He returned to feature film-making with Build a House, Plant a Tree (Postav dom, zasaď strom, 1980). Jakubisko earned international acclaim with the epic A Thousand-Year Old Bee (sometimes mistranslated as “millennial”; Tisícročná včela, 1983). This movie was a real event for the country. People of all ages went to see it in mass and the tickets were sold out for many weeks after its release. Since then he won further international awards and earned great respect worldwide. Another popular film still played in TV is Perinbaba.

Jakubisko is often also credited as a screenplay writer as he usually co-writes or writes the scripts of his movies.—Wikipedia

read less

Wall

Displaying 2 wall posts.

see all

Cassandra Tavukciyan

19Jun11

candles, wardrobes, fur vests :the birds represent 'the souls of the dead' in this dark, carnivalesque frolic, a trio of 'orphans', Yorick, Andrej and Marta, playing games in a crumbling old house, erotic theatricality, and psychedelic 'liberationist' surrealism in the design and editing.

johnsonisjohnson likes this

Madison Killo

16Jun11

An interesting play on estranging oneself from the madness of the world (and the shadow of the USSR) through foolishness and apparent nonchalant attitudes, similar to Chytilova's "Daisies." “Birds, Orphans and Fools” is yet another classic of the obscure Czech new wave that brings you under into potent yet nuanced blissful delirium. 'Only madness guarantees that you won't remain unhappy.'

johnsonisjohnson and 2 others like this

Ferah, clockworkdaisyblues