The Firemen's Ball (35mm)

Sunday, 5/6 & Tuesday, 5/8

“In 1967, the year before Soviet tanks rampaged through Czechoslovakia, Forman subtly, scathingly, used the premise of a quaint provincial party to mock the Party.” – Richard Brody, New Yorker Magazine

CGAC pays tribute to the late, great Milos Forman with the film that catapulted him to the U.S. and the Oscar-winning blockbusters (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) that followed. A milestone of the Czech New Wave, Forman’s first color film The Firemen’s Ball is both a dazzling comedy and a provocative political satire. A hilarious saga of good intentions confounded, the story chronicles a firemen’s ball where nothing goes right - from a beauty pageant whose reluctant contestants embarrass the organizers to a lottery from which nearly all the prizes are pilfered. Presumed to be a commentary on the communist system, the film was “banned forever” in Czechoslovakia following the Soviet invasion and prompted Forman’s move to America and international stardom.

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Join us at the Gables Cinema during our special tribute screenings, honoring the life and careers of beloved filmmakers who have passed.

Check out the rest of our In Memoriam program!

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