Authors

Discussion

ABSTRACT

After the Invasion: Karel Kachyňa, the Holocaust and Czechoslovak Normalisation examines three Holocaust-themed works, Golden Eels (Zlatí úhoři, 1979), Death of a Beautiful Deer (Smrt krásných srnců, 1986) and The Last Butterfly (Poslední motýl, 1991), by Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyňa during the normalisation period of the Czechoslovak communist era. Reflective of the current period of profound change and rupture in central and eastern Europe following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this work addresses the filmmaking culture in Czechoslovakia following the Soviet-led invasion by the Warsaw Pact nations in August 1968. This work seeks to challenge the critical reception of Kachyňa’s normalisation era (c. 1970-1989) works, where a focus on his use of children’s narratives and crude humour during the period has had a diminishing effect. Engaging with legitimate concerns over Kachyňa’s ability to continue to work following the invasion, when many of his New Wave contemporaries from the 1960s like Jiří Menzel and Věra Chytilová were banned and some like Miloš Forman felt compelled to emigrate, this work explores how Kachyňa’s Holocaust-themed films address the filmmaker’s attempts to produce a humanist poetics in the face of a dehumanising authoritarian regime, despite essentially working for the communist regime he was attempting to criticise. In generating analogies between the horrors of the Nazi regime and his contemporaneous experience under communism, Kachyňa provides a powerfully subversive body of work which resonates with conflicts in the region today.