The 2014 festival has the theme of "resistance", marking 25 years since the end of the Communist regime. "Communism is still very much in the collective memory," Howard says, citing the mini-seriesBurning Bush - directed by Agneiszka Holland, a Pole who attended film school in Prague - as one of the new works being screened that confronts that history head-on.
The festival's retrospective component - including, this year, a tribute to Svankmajer - underlines the continuity between the old and the new. "Surrealism has never died in that part of the world," Howard says, adding that the Czech and Slovak brand of surrealism tends to be darker and more pessimistic than its French equivalent.
Bohemians Down Under