Daisies (Sedmikrásky) Various Artists

Back in the latter half of the 1960’s the burgeoning idiosyncratic group of alternative filmmakers coming out of (then) Czechoslovakia known as the Czech New Wave were taking art house cinemas in Western Europe and America by storm. The hour long films that came out of the infamous Barrandov production house played a competitive rival to that of the French and Italian New Waves with their very own immaculate and spellbinding takes on cinema verite, film noir, surrealism and cinema concrete. But after the Soviet Union invaded Czech in August 1968 the clampdown on non-conformist creative arts saw over 70 films either banned or withdrawn from production in a mass culling of film reels until 1970. It is not until recent years that the genre has become widely recognised as a veritable and virtually untapped source of inspiration for fans of experimental cinema, psychedelic cinematography, baroque costumes and scenery, music and graphic design.

‘Daisies’ pulls together what you might call the ‘Holy Trinity’ of the Czech New Wave – director Vera Chytilova, costume and set designer Esther Krumbachova, and cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera – arguably the three most forward thinking and truly experiMENTAL minds in the whole of the CNW collective.