New Arrival Daisies (#1157)

If the entire world is bad, why shouldnt we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanov and Jitka Cerhov), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Vra Chytilov, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kuera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachov, who also cowrote the script. The result isDaisies,the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold authoritarian oppression in any form.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring film scholars Daniel Bird and Peter Hames
• New interview with film programmer Irena Kovarova
• Documentary from 2002 about director Vra Chytilov
• Documentary about the artistic collaboration among Chytilov, cinematographer Jaroslav Kuera, and screenwriter Ester Krumbachov
• Two short films from 1962 by Chytilov:A Bagful of FleasandCeiling
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carmen Gray