Penelope

Penelopa

Restorer Eva Kamenická (rendered beautifully by Božidara Turzonovová)
arrives to an unidentified village where she has been summoned to restore
the dilapidated wall painting of Ulysses’ wife Penelope in the hall of the
local castle. The local community accepts her rather cautiously and although
Eva’s appearance and temperament sticks out of the local colour, the
unknown place gradually opens up to her and reveals its tragic secrets. Thus
Eva meets a good-natured, limping Viktor (Michal Dočolomanský) who is
not the sole victim of the abandoned quarry by the village, his embittered
and silent father (Gustáv Valach) and a woman (Eva Kristínová) who is
called Wallflower of Change by the locals because she has been waiting for
40 years for her husband and son to return from America where they went
to seek jobs. The main character fulfils her determination to start anew in
this improbable place while the main protagonist manages to lend her role
a touch of believability and inevitability.

  • Year:
    1977
  • Runtime:
    86
  • Country:
    Czechoslovakia
  • Director:
    Štefan Uher
  • Screenplay:
    Alfonz Bednár
  • Dir. of Photography:
    Stanislav Szomolányi
  • Music:
    Svetozár Stračina
  • Editor:
    Maximilián Remeň
  • Cast:
    Božidara Turzonovová (Eva), Eva Kristínová, Gustáv Valach, Michal Dočolomanský, Ilja Prachař, Dušan Blaškovič, Milan Kiš, Anton Šulík
  • Production:
    Slovenská filmová tvorba Bratislava
  • Sales:
    Slovenský filmový ústav
  • Festivals:
    Special Honorary Mention of the Jury - 16th Festival of Czech and Slovak Films České Budějovice 1978)

Schedule:

13.11.2017 18:00 Kino Lumière (K2) (Božidara Turzonovová in attendance)

About the Director:

Štefan Uher

Štefan Uher (1930, Prievidza, Czechoslovakia – 1993, Bratislava, Slovakia) remains one of the most prominent auteurs of the Slovak cinema. He graduated from Prague’s FAMU, majoring in documentary filmmaking, and soon began his professional career in the domain of documentary and short films before he gravitated toward fiction. His second fiction feature, Sun in the Net (Slnko v sieti, 1962), is still considered the work that initiated the Czechoslovak new wave in cinema. He also made a number of other remarkable films including The Organ (Organ, 1964), Miraculous Virgin (Panna Zázračnica, 1966), The Three Daughters (Tri dcéry, 1968), If i Had a Gun (Keby som mal pušku, 1971) or She Kept Asking for the Moon (Pásla kone na betóne, 1982).