Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 19/11/2017)

Once again inspired by the writings of Shoah survivor Arnost Lustig, the story follows Jewish boys Ladislav Jánsky and Antonin Kumbera on their flight through the hostile countryside after jumping a train bound for a concentration camp. Running just 63 excruciating minutes, this says more about the physical and psychological trauma of the Holocaust than any number of over-praised Hollywood epics. With the visceral imagery captured by Jaroslav Kucera's handheld camera being compellingly cut into point of view shots, flashbacks, dreams, fears and recollections by editors Miroslav Hájek and Jitka Šulcová, Nemec's neglected masterpiece should finally receive the acclaim it merits.

The action is spread over four days. But time is almost an irrelevance, as Jánsky and Kumbera stumble through undergrowth in a desperate bid to reach some kind of sanctuary before hunger and fatigue overwhelm them. At one point, they encounter farmer's wife Irma Bischofova in her kitchen and they are later tracked and captured by a group of grizzled hunters, who see them as elusive sport rather than helpless youths. But interaction matters much less than imagination, as Nemec presents the rush of thoughts, terrors and hallucinations that assaults the boys as they become ever-more lost, disorientated and desperate.

Largely eschewing dialogue, Nemec relies on the visuals to convey both narrative information and personal perspective. The pain experienced by one of the lads is explained by the memory of swapping some food for a pair of ill-fitting shoes on the train, while incipient exhaustion is conveyed by the collapse of trees and the dread of death by a flashforward to a corpse being swarmed by ants. The reflections and speculations are fragmented, transient and confused. Yet they devastatingly encapsulate the inexorable sense of desolation and debilitation that Nemec refuses to alleviate by providing both optimistic and pessimistic conclusions.

Emboldened by his success, Nemec took on the Communist authorities in his disarming parable, The Party and the Guests (1966), which became one of the films `banned forever' after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. Co-scripted by Nemec's then-wife, Ester Krumbachová, this Buñuelian spin on a Kafkaesque nightmare explores several of the director's recurring themes, including the curtailment of freedom, the extent to which people are complicit in their own destiny and the ease with which those under threat resort to violence.

As seven middle-aged friends picnic in the idyllic Czech countryside, they are approached by Jan Klusák, who leads them to a clearing where his acolytes set up a desk for him to interview the bemused, but accepting septet. Karel Mareš makes a half-hearted attempt at protesting, while the intellectual Jiri Nemec tries to reason with the officiously polite Klusák. He is reprimanded by stepfather Ivan Vyskocil, however, who invites Mareš, Nemec and their companions Zdena Skvorecká, Pavel Bosek, Helena Pejškova, Evald Schorm and Jana Pracharová to his birthday celebration.

Everyone seems to be having a splendid time and there is a general sense of consensus when Vyskocil addresses the gathering. However, Schorm is discomfited by the readiness of his fellow revellers to go along with Vyskocil's pronouncements and slips away into the woods, while nobody is looking. His disapproving wife, Pracharová, barely notices he has gone, as she has realised she is sitting in the wrong place and causes mayhem when she insists on sitting somewhere else. Eventually, Vyskocil restores order and promises Marel that he will be compensated after Klusák confiscates his knife. But Vyskocil's mood darkens when he discovers that Schorm has absconded and he organises the guests into search parties, as the picnickers are left behind and the only sound to be heard is that of Klusák's snarling dog.

Nemec completed the project in five weeks, as he was concerned that the censor would shut down the shoot. His fears were realised when the film was denied a release because it had `nothing in common with our republic, socialism and the ideas of Communism'. The ban was confirmed after the fall of Alexander Dubcek and the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival during the May Days. But, while Nemec was prevented from making further features, the reputation of his deceptively restrained act of defiance grew.

Working with a largely non-professional cast - Klusák was a noted film composer and Schorm a fellow director who had also fallen foul of the authorities - Nemec focused as much on conformity and peer pressure as he did on faux paternalism and coercion. The ease with which the guests are psychologically manipulated is chilling, as the white-suited, Leninesque Vyskocil pacifies his hearers with empty promises and veiled threats. But the mood of stealthily claustrophobic oppression is unnervingly reinforced by Oldrich Bosák's bleakly absurdist production design and Jaromir Soft's surveillance-style camerawork.

Nemec felt under an obligation to depict `a world independent of reality as it appears at the time' and he fulfilled what he saw as the obligation of all thinking people `to attack obstacles to freedom' in Martyrs of Love (1967), a triptych of melancholic comedies co-written with Krumbachova to expose the symbols of authoritarianism that had become prevalent across Czechoslovakia. In `The Junior Clerk's Temptation', the bowler-hatted Petr Kopriva tries to impress Marta Kubišová in a near-wordless homage to the great silent clowns. Dialogue is equally sparingly used in `Anastasia's Dream', which sees maid Hana Kuberova daydream about rejecting a royal suitor, and `Orphan Rudolph's Adventure', which accompanies the bashful Josef Konicek to a garden party at which he is mistaken for someone else.

Complete with British director Lindsay Anderson cameoing as a traffic cop alongside Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbandova, the stars of Vera Chytilova's Daisies (1967), this little-seen film was completed around the time Nemec made Mother and Son, which explored notions of violence and complicity through a brief study of a mother's love for a thuggish cop. Yet, even though this took the Grand Prix at Oberhausen, it is somewhat overshadowed here by the first UK screening of Oratorio for Prague (1968), which was smuggled out of the country after the Soviet crackdown on 21 August and gave the outside world its only glimpse of the Kremlin's brutal response to the Prague Spring.

Despite being shown without credits, this footage landed Nemec in serious trouble and he didn't make another film in his homeland until after the Velvet Revolution. He would recall the risks he took to film on the streets of the beleaguered capital in The Ferrari Dino Girl (2009), but had to content himself during a prolonged exile in Germany and the United States with experimental shorts like The Czech Connection (1975), which opened with a shot of his corpse being discovered on a rubbish dump.

Nemec's Prague footage found its way into Philip Kaufman's adaptation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the brain surgeon whose relationships with wife Juliette Binoche and mistress Lena Olin are disrupted by the Soviet incursion. As Nemec served as a special consultant on the picture, it is showing here together with Toyen (2005), which recounts the efforts of Surrealist painter Marie Cermínová (aka Toyen) to protect her Jewish lover, Jindrich Heisler, during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

This biopic reunited Nemec with Zuzana Stivinova, who had voiced the title role in Late Night Talks With My Mother (2001), a stylised self-portrait inspired by Franz Kafka's Letter to His Father that makes extensive use of fish-eye lenses in examining the impact of a series of tumultuous events on Prague, Nemec and his optician mother changed. Václav Havel, Eric Clapton, Marta Kubišová, Saul Zaents and ex-wives Ester Krumbachová and Marta Kubišová make guest appearances alongside Karel Roden, who resumed his duties as Nemec's alter ego to narrate what proved to be his final feature, The Wolf From Royal Vineyeard Street (2016).

Looking back on the highs and lows of a career that never quite went according to plan, Karel Roden confides that the wolf of the title is `a wild, cunning and uncontrollable creature' and that `the wolf still stays the wolf, even if he is a little worn out after some time'. But, while he continues to provide the narration, Roden cedes the screen to Jirí Mádl, whose Jan John is Nemec à clef, as he fetches up at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, where he is competing with The Party and the Guests. According to the gossip, the jury has promised that a Czechoslovakian film will win the Palme d'or. But the closing of the festival in sympathy with some striking workers deprives Nemec and compatriots Milos Forman (The Fireman's Ball) and Jirí Menzel (Capricious Summer) of the chance to take the top prize.

Not one to take a setback lightly, Nemec blames Jean-Luc Godard for dashing his hopes of glory and, when he commends the Soviets for intervening in Prague, Nemec bludgeons Godard to death in an act of wishful thinking. The return of the fish-eye lenses from Late Night Talks With Mother suggests that Nemec is intent on sprinkling his last screen testament with red herrings and part of the fun of picking through the reminiscences, the details filleted from the short story collection Don't Shake the Waiter's Hand and the liberal dashes of artistic licence gives this teasing memoir its piquancy.

Did Nemec make a living shooting wedding videos in California and did Ivana Trump once approach him with the offer of funding for a project? And did he really obtain an invitation to the `attend the funeral of Communism' in 1989 in order to satisfy the demands of the petty functionary (Ted Otis) from the American State Department, who refused to give him a visa to return to a homeland that was about to go out of existence?

This exchange contrasts with Nemec's interrogation by a Soviet official (Martin Pechlát) after he grabbed the August 68 footage that one suspects he considered his most valuable achievement as both a film-maker and a subversive patriot. But it clearly continued to rankle that Forman went on to enjoy dual Oscar-winning success in Hollywood, while Menzel remains at Barrandov Studios and became a national treasure. Indeed, he even bends the facts about them being presented with Crystal Globes at the 2015 Karlovy Vary Film Festival to make his displeasure felt.

As Nemec died the day before shooting ended, assisting director Tomáš Klein completed the picture at the behest of Nemec's widow, Iva Ruzseláková, and with the support of creative producer Jakub Felcman and editor Josef Krajbich. The result is patchy, but truculently personal and confirms that no one succeeded in taming the enfant terrible of the Czech Film Miracle.

Elsewhere on the programme, there will be a chance to see Alice Nellis's HBO series, Wasteland, as well as Karel Lamac's silent corrupting city fable, The Sins of Love (1929), Jan Hrebejk's The Teacher, Bohdan Sláma's Ice Mother, Helena Treštíkovás time-lapse documentary, A Marriage Story, and Peter and Harriet Gordon Getzels's profile of the late Zuzana Ružicková, Zuzana: Music Is Life, which proves a fitting tribute to the Czech harpsichordist, who died on 27 September at the age of 90.

Born in Plzen to the owner of a department store, Ružicková had started taking piano lessons at the age of nine after recovering from pneumonia. In 1942, however, she was interned with her family in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where she had continued her musical education before being transferred to Auschwitz with her mother. Advised to lie about her age, Ružicková managed to make herself sufficiently useful to remain off the death lists. When she was finally condemned to die, however, her execution date coincided with D-Day and not only was she spared, but she was also sent to Hamburg as a forced labourer.

Having been liberated from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 with bubonic plague and severely damaged hands, Ružicková found herself at risk from the anti-Semites in the newly installed Communist Party. Indeed, she tried to dissuade composer Viktor Kalabis from marrying her. But, even though they were kept under surveillance, the pair were allowed to pursue their careers after Ružicková won the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1956. She had been scared of bumping into some of her wartime persecutors, but her triumph gave her a certain cachet within Czechoslovakia as she was able to perform abroad in order to bring in much-needed revenue.

Recalling her experiences with a mix of sober reflection and wry wit, Ružicková takes great pride in having been the first artist to record all of Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord works and in having been able to mentor talents like Mahan Esfahani. But she retains a modesty and a vivacity that makes this such an engaging study, whose value is boosted by the access that the husband-and-wife film-makers were granted to the Czech television archives.