Something Different / A Bagful Of Fleas - Two Films By Věra Chytilová (DVD)

Two films directed by late, great avant-garde Czech film director Věra Chytilová.

Something Different follows the lives of two women; a gymnast in gruelling training (real life Olympic gold-medallist Eva Bosáková), and a dissatisfied housewife (Vera Uzelacová). The two strands never meet, but provide a progressive comment on each other and the differing roles of the women.

In A Bagful of Fleasdepicts a young girl's rebellion against those in charge of her all-girl school dormitory.

Vera Chytilová (Daisies, Traps, Fruit of Paradise) was one of the Czech New Wave's most rebellious, irreverent and boundary-breaking talents.

These two terrific early works introduce themes evident across her career: a progressive female viewpoint in a world of double standards and predatory sexualisation dominated by men, the expectations and strictures of female gender roles, and a strong critique of contemporary society. Combining elements of cinema vérité and formalism, and spiked with anarchic humour, her films broke with both genre and ideology and charted a new path for Czechoslovak and Eastern European cinema.

• Something Different – first-ever release of the film in the UK, presented from a new high-definition digital transfer of original materials.
• A Bagful of Fleas – a world-premiere release on DVD, presented from the new 2k restoration of the film.
• 16-page booklet featuring a new essay by Czech cinema expert, author and film programmer Peter Hames.