BLIND LOVES (SLOVAKIA/2008/JURAJ LEHOTSKÝ)

Dealing with the different ways in which blind people handle romantic situations, Juraj Lehotský’s debut feature follows the lives of four individuals over a period of three years. Peter, an avid piano teacher to blind children, is very happily married and plans to take his wife Iveta to the seaside for the first time. Miro eagerly pursues purblind girl Monika in spite of her parents’ intense disapproval. Pregnant Elena is concerned about her unborn child’s sight. Teenager Zuzanna, just beginning secondary school, searches the internet for love in the belief that she will be judged differently if people don’t know she’s blind. The stories are told with a quasi-documentary realism, and are bookended by surreal animated vignettes reminiscent of Georges Méliès.

Lehotský quietly examines his subjects with sensitivity, without excluding them from any definition of ‘normality’. Miro is shown as a typical man whose dual outsider status as blind and Romani means he is always treated differently, and through sharing his intimate moments of self-discovery, the audience instead comes to know him as a normal human being. By showing us in great detail the lives of blind people, Lehotský puts focus on the tactile dimension of cinema that is rarely acknowledged. As Zuzanna runs her hands over a pockmarked desk or writes with her specially-adapted typewriter, we as ‘viewers’ learn more about her life than words or pictures could say. Unusual and heartfelt, Blind Loves is a worthwhile watch, deftly handling multiple stories without sentimentally intertwining them at the end.

322 (SLOVAKIA/1969/DUŠAN HANÁK)

In this existentialist drama, Jozef Lauko is a middle-aged chef, living with his wayward ex-wife. Before we have even met him, we learn that he has terminal cancer (the title, 322, is the diagnostic code). In the agonising wait for a diagnosis, Lauko re-evaluates his life, questioning whether he has really been living for the moment, and what he has made of the relationships he has with people. When a phone call from the hospital informs him enigmatically that they have a bed for him, Lauko accepts his mortality, but as he grows more aware of his own imminent fate, he also becomes more conscious of other people’s lives. A suave jazz score runs through the film, as if a passing commuter train reminding the audience that life goes on.

Director Dušan Hanák began his career as a documentarian, but won considerable acclaim with this, his debut. Hanák is clearly a philanthropist, and yet his characters seem so flatly tolerant of life’s volatility. Lauko himself is a weak protagonist, but his observations of other people form the film’s very narrative. In the original short story from which the film was adapted, Lauko was apolitical, but Hanák was adamant that he was a former communist, contextualising the feature and giving the character’s self-deprecation some depth. In this way, 322 is perhaps not as timeless as some of its contemporaries, but still stands out as yet another great flagship of the Czechoslovak New Wave, a movement still palpable in European cinema today.

THE SUN IN A NET (SLOVAKIA/1962/ŠTEFAN UHER)

Featuring some of the most beautiful and inventive photography of the sixties, The Sun In A Net breaks away from the laboured socio-realism of many of its contemporaries, instead treasuring the richness of every image, a precedent set for the Czechoslovak New Wave of the second half of the decade. With a wonderfully progressive score by musique concrète artist Ilja Zeljenka, the film tells the story of Fajolo and Bela, a troubled young couple who independently use Fajolo’s time at a lakeside summer camp as an excuse to see other people. As lovers and locations interconnect, the couple learn something new about one another, indirectly bonding in a way they could never have asked for.

At the beginning of the film, everyone’s prime concern is to witness the eclipse. Even when the spectacle is over, the theme of limited scope is used and reused, whether it be the purblindness of Bela’s long-suffering mother, or the window frame on the fisherman’s outlook, a location which hosts some of the film’s most private moments. Glimmers of sunlight rebound off water and glass, as if a reminder of the spark of love that had once been. Although the main characters are not particularly likeable, the film sympathises with the restlessness of youth, with most of the adults keeping a tight-lipped vigil over their exploits, as if reluctant to interrupt them. With an excellent script and outstanding union of image and sound, director Štefan Uher has created a timeless but underrated work of art.