CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel (2-Disc Blu-ray)

Epic, expansive, affectionate and deeply passionate, CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel is an extraordinary documentary film, a labour of love by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. Its depth and scale are unparalleled in the study of the Czechoslovak cinema.

Jirí Menzel’s debut film Closely Observed Trains (Ostre sledované vlaky, 1966) made a profound impression on young film student Dungarpur. Years later, he invited Menzel to meet him in a Prague café - and so began a conversation and a friendship that has culminated in this epic, seven-hour-plus film that not only explores the deceptively whimsical comic films of Jirí Menzel, but all of the artists who strove to make films that whispered subversion and rebellion often at the risk of their livelihood, or even their lives.

Filmed over a period of seven years, Dungarpur and his team interviewed filmmakers, actors, crew members, writers, historians and critics who had been touched by the New Wave - including Vera Chytilová, Miloš Forman, Vojtech Jasný, Ivan Passer, Ken Loach, Juraj Jakubisko, Jaromír Šofr, Andrzej Wajda, Dušan Hanák, Štefan Uher, Jan Nemec, and Miroslav Ondrícek among them.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur's expansive, passionate portrait of the Czech filmmaker