Search The Archive
"One of the great outpourings of cinematic invention in an age of over-all artistic liberation … a dazzling, bewildering catalogue of visual effects." – The New Yorker
Daisies is the Czech New Wave's most anarchic, riotous comedy: a collage of surreal transitions, colour filters and avant-garde techniques that portrays the decision of a pair of teenage girls to rebel against social convention. Immersing themselves in a range of hijinks – from stringing along older suitors to demolishing a lavish banquet – they transgress against good taste, patriarchal demands and the laws of physics.
The late Věra Chytilová's masterpiece was banned by the authorities – ostensibly because of food wastage, but more likely because of its gleeful assault on the conformist sensibilities of communist Czechoslovakia. Nearly 50 years later, it remains a classic of feminist cinema and a ceaselessly enjoyable exercise in subversion.
"Daisies is the ethos of the Prague Spring turbocharged. It's inventive. It's innovative. It's surreal." – The Boston Globe
