Summary
Following an enforced seven-year hiatus and a period at Kratký film, Věra Chytilová was able to return to Barrandov at the end of the 1970s. She made two bitterly funny morality tales, Panelstory aneb Jak se rodí sídliště / Panelstory or Birth of a Community (1979) and Kalamita / Calamity (1980) at almost the same time. Kalamita focuses on a young university graduate, Honza (Boleslav Polívka), who starts working for the railway. He is not yet accustomed to the rules of his new environment, and his unpreparedness highlights the conformism and stereotypes around him. In the process, he reveals the lack of capable leadership, and so the dysfunctionality of the whole system. The culmination of the hero’s initiation is his first train journey as the driver, during which the tracks are hit by an avalanche. A higher power intervenes in petty personal conflicts, forcing the complacent
citizens to abandon their safe positions. A higher power also intervened during the filming of
Kalamita, which took place under the watchful eye of the censors in five stages during the winter of 1978 and 1979. The flu epidemic and problems with the weather meant that filming had to come to a complete halt. Chytilová used the resulting free time to make Panelstory. Only afterwards did she return to Kalamita. While this biting parable on the moral apathy of Czechoslovak society was approved and released in cinemas after a number of edits were made, there was no advertising campaign for it. Audience interest was nevertheless so great that it led to screenings being prohibited in Prague.
