»Panelstory« on July 1st within Czech Film Wednesday
23.06.2026
For Czech Film Wednesday on July 1, we will be screening the 1979 comedy *Panelstory aneb Jak se rodí sídliště* (*Panelstory, or How a Housing Estate Is Born*). In this film, the renowned director Věra Chytilová—one of the few women in the Czechoslovak New Wave—depicts in an unconventional way the chaotic life in a Prague prefabricated housing estate still under construction.
What’s particularly unusual is the film’s chaotic narrative style, which weaves together many anecdotes involving various characters, thereby highlighting the chaos on this “inhabited construction site.” We meet a boy who skips out of daycare and spends the day doing his own thing, an old man from the countryside who wants to bring a bit of humanity to the anonymous community, a pregnant student, a vain actor, some not-very-hardworking construction workers drinking beer, a somewhat corrupt master painter, and many more. Each anecdote is told with subtle humor, painting a picture of a community of people who are by no means living up to socialist ideals, but who are primarily trying to muddle through life as best they can.
That’s why the film had to wait two years before it was released in theaters after completion. “This is not a critical reaction to the regime, but rather an observation of human behavior,” Věra Chytilová said later. Well, even that was a problem if it was too honest.
We’ve scheduled two screenings of this famous film again, at 5:45 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. The later showing is almost sold out again, so you’d better hurry if you want to attend.