A Thousand-year-old Bee
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| A Thousand-year-old Bee relied on ample doses of storytelling, eroticism, and whim. The sequence in the clip starts with Hermína Haderpánová (Barbora Štěpánová) suggestively letting her German-language tutor Valent Pichanda (Michal Dočolomanský) know of her interest in him, a cut brings Valent to a hedgerow with his lover Hanka Kolárová (Jana Riháková-Dolanská), and their encounter is interrupted by one of the movie's numerous figments, ball lightning passing through quaint locales with an intercut close-up of an eccentric face (not a story character). |
| The filmmakers also paid tribute to the Marxist-Leninist class doctrines by depicting the capitalists of the past as unsavory characters. Hermína's father (Hugo Kaminský), a businessman, was given a disparaging last name, Haderpán – translatable as "Rag-Lord," while Valent, the only one of the Pichandas who leaves their wholesome village to become an entrepreneurial lawyer, was written as a calculating cheater and contrasted with the earthy merits of his ultimately pro-Communist brother Samuel (Štefan Kvietik). |
| A Thousand-year-old Bee received a Golden Phoenix for art and cinematography from the Cultural Centre of the City of Venice in 1983 (not a Golden Lion or another prize as many sources say). Often confused with a Festival prize, the Golden Phoenix is awarded concurrently with the prestigious bi-annual Venice International Film Festival, but it is not a prize from the Festival jury. |
A review of A Thousand-year-old Bee.
Slovak cinema under communism.
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