The Firemen´s Ball (Horí ma Panenko, Milos Forman, 1967, Czechoslovakia)

In a small czech village the annual firemen´s ball is being planned to fullest detail, a lottery is organized and winnings collected, girls are auditioned for a beauty contest and the winner is to present the 86-year-old retiring president with a golden hatchet. Life and unpredictable circumstances see to that nothing happens as it should. The lottery prizes vanish mysteriously one by one, the committee, finding girls to shy and mothers to ferocous, start abducting any girl pretty or not and the ancient president desparate for a quick trip to the little boys room is kept waiting and waiting.

The film is written by Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek and Ivan Passer and is inspired by a real-life firemmen´s ball. According to Forman: “What we saw was such a nightmare that we didn´t stop talking until next day about it. So we abandoned what we were writing on to start writing this script”. The film demonstrates critical awaerness of Soviet society and is is not hard to view it as a sly political allegory though Forman has always maintained that the film has no “hidden symbols or double meanings”. The movie was shot with non-professional actors in the village of Vrchlabí and was shelved for a year when it was finished in 1967 and then ran for three weeks in 1968 before it was banned, never to be shown again in communist Czechoslovakia.

Forman soon relocated to USA where he continued film-making and still is. His most favored works are One Flew Over the Cockoo´s Nest, Amadeus and Man on the Moon.