CL: In the mid-70's you made The Apple Game and you (Dasha Blahova) were involved as well. What are your recollections of this film and working with Vera?

Dasha Blahova: The Apple Game was her (Vera's) first film in a long time. It was actually the first film she was able to shoot. This film was actually quite a rocket in our country.

VC: It was a huge success in the cinema and, because of that huge success, it created some sort of a scandal because at the same time the Czech Cinematography was claiming that there was a crisis in attendances in the cinemas, and suddenly this came along and people went to see it even in the mornings, which was something very unusual at this time

DB: This film wasn't allegory but they saw it as allegory, the system you see. It took a while for it to be accepted by the authorities.

CL: Had that paradox, that it did very well, make people also feel uncomfortable?

{niftybox background=#afdeb2, width=360px} DB: No, there were all sorts of fors and againsts – there was births, hospitals, that it was something new for a Communist system, people who shouldn't really be seeing things like that, like a naked body. Whatever excuse it was, it was. {/niftybox}

VC: They did not let the film show for half a year as my Communist colleague marked the film as pornography. Also the depiction of giving birth was considered unsuitable. So, they initiated a query which was actually a question asked afterwards by the Soviet Embassy: 'How is it possible that in the Czech Republic, these films are being made which are not suitable, or cannot be seen because it's unsuitable for watching by the Soviet audiences?'

DB: By the way, the film was being shown and getting praises outside of the Czech Republic before it was being shown there. It got awards in Chicago, the Soviet Union, etc., a year before it was shown in our country.

CL: Bringing us to tonight's film, Prague: Restless Heart of Europe, it was a series of films on European cultural cities, how honored did you feel to be asked to make the film on behalf of Prague?

VC:They did not address me, they addressed Jiri Menzel and Menzel was not able to do it, so he asked me to do it. So I said yes, but the Italian Producer who actually ordered this film to be made, had to agree with it. {niftybox background=#afdeb2, width=360px} They agreed with this, but after the film was made they put on the credits that the film was made by Jiri Menzel. Since then I have been to court with the Italian Producers and that Court Case still hasn't finished. It hasn't happened before, but you send your film abroad and they do different credits, and you can't do anything about that. We approach the European Association of Filmmakers to help us with this case and nothing really could have been done about that. Italians are not possible to be killed.{/niftybox}

What was more complicated was that the whole series was meant to have been an exchange, so they would have to withdraw the copies and change all of the subtitles, the credits, and that obviously was bad, so now you have an opportunity to correct that...it's true because even now, when I was looking at the web pages and the credits, many still have the film as being shot by Menzel. I have just found out that here (at this festival) we are going to show the film with no credits at all, so I am not happy about it, I am enraged because now you are in partnership with those criminals (laughs).

And if you are happy about this, you are an immoral person.

Always relentlessly and uncompromisingly fighting for justice,

even I was humorously being put to rights for any prejudgment I may have had regards Vera and her films. That aside it was a privilege to have met and interviewed her.

In the last years of her life, Vera was mainly inactive but was paradoxically the recipient of honors and the recognition she largely failed to achieve at the height of her long career.

Since 1992 Chytilová has carried the French honorary title Knight of Arts and Literature and in 1998, she was bestowed with a Medal of Merit from then-president Václav Havel. At the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, she received a Golden Crystal Globe for her lifetime contribution to world cinema. She also received a Czech Lion for her artistic contribution to Czech film.

On the occasion of her eightieth birthday in 2009, she accepted a gold medal from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, at whose faculty of film she studied and currently functions as head of the department of direction. Czech president Václav Klaus wished the director good health and inspiration for films to come. "I admired your films as early as the 1960s, and no less in the seventies and eighties. For me they were a confirmation that it was possible to survive that absurd twenty-year period without abandoning one's opinions and stance, and to do something positive," wrote Klaus in a letter.

Also in 2009 (in June) she was a guest at the 17th Annual Art Film Fest, in Trencín and Trencianske Teplice, Slovakia which I also attended and found that she was being honored there. On the day of the festival's closing ceremony she personally introduced her film Kopytem Sem, Kopytem Tam (Tainted Horseplay, 1988). The film focuses on the contemporary AIDS crisis as a point of departure for the study of superficial human relationships and mortality, a circumstance which uncovers the individual essences in the lives of three otherwise likeable thirty-something characters. At the ceremony itself she accepted the festival's Golden Camera prize in recognition of half a century's work in film. In awarding her the prize the festival lifted a quote from one of her first interviews earlier in her career when she said

"A film has to have truth, aesthetic, reason, feeling and belief – because a film has to be true, exciting, necessary, beautiful and full of hope. These are the kind of films I'd like to make. But I fear that I'll never know how," and concluded that her works are proof that, with this last sentence, she was triumphantly mistaken.

Steven Yates

Steven Yates studied Film and English at Kent University before taking an M.A. at Westminster University in London. Working as a freelance film writer since 1998, he has been published in books for Wallflower Press and in magazines and websites including Film International, theartsdesk.com, Celluloid, afterimage and El Hype. Based in Berlin, he is a member of FIPRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics) and has sat on their jury at numerous international film festivals since 2002. He is also one of the main English language supervisors for the FIPRESCI website (www.fipresci.org) and is currently trying to acquire outside financial support for the federation.

All photos © Czech National Film Archive