The White Dove
František Vláčil, 1960, 67 min
Czech with English subtitles

“Vláčil uncovered new possibilities of expression in the languages of film – image, music, and sound – while, at the same time, experimenting with a new type of metaphoric narrative” – Peter Hames

"František Vláčil’s debut feature is an exemplar of the purity and poetry of his vision. A near-experimental work of great humanism and lyricism, it traces the flight of a bird that loses it way home to the Baltic coast, where a young girl waits for it, and winds up in Prague, where a young boy and a painter rescue it. Gorgeously rendered in black-and-white, always alert to the compositional possibilities of architecture and landscape, and full of striking imagery, White Dove is an allegory of great hope and grace. It was a major influence on the emerging filmmakers of the Czech New Wave for its rejection of narrative formula and ideological restriction and its embrace of poetics, visual storytelling, and creative freedom." – The Cinematheque

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Part of our season on the Czechoslovak New Wave