The Ferrari Dino Girl

Following on from his Late Night Talks With Mother, veteran Czech New Wave director Jan Nĕmec (The Party and the Guests) contributes another film to a genre that has been called auto-documentary. In 1968, he filmed the first footage of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to be smuggled out of the country. It subsequently appeared in television coverage throughout the world as well as in his own film Oratorio for Prague and the Hollywood adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here he recounts how he filmed the material and smuggled it to Austria with the help of a girl called Jana, 'the Ferrari Dino girl'. The 16 minutes of unedited film form the centrepiece of the film, framed by semi-abstract images of buildings and city streets, with 'guest appearances' by Karel Roden as Nĕmec and Tammy Sundquist as Jana. Despite being a film 'on the edge of experiment', The Ferrari Dino Girl provides a strangely direct and authentic document on one of the century's key events. Shown without commentary or editorial intervention, the footage itself attains something of its original traumatic impact. Peter Hames