FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Milos Forman - The Firemen's Ball (engl. subt.) 

Milos Forman's film was banned in Czechoslovakia in 1968 by the Communist Party forever and ever. A great honor for an artist! One could see in The Firemen's Ball a hidden attack on the oppressors from the Soviet Union, who actually invaded Prague in 1968 to suppress a popular uprising. The Prague Spring. It tells the amusing story of a retirement party for an elderly fireman. A celebration that in truth is about the madness of bureaucracy and how to successfully cover up a theft. Anyone who loves Czech films knows that just such stories are widely spread. Czech cinema tells of such everyday things that happen to ordinary people. And if you see the story twice, you realize that it is a parable. It shows 24 hours in which the firemen prepare for their ball. Actually, they are planning to pay homage to their former boss, just a little too late - because the 85-year-old is likely to die soon and is not as agile as he was the year before. So they present the man with cancer with a miniature axe in a gift box. Some think that the fireman symbolizes all the traditional values before the Soviets came. But what happens during the Firemen's Festival can be understood as a paradox of Soviet communism. During the festival, a barn begins to burn. The firemen race to the scene, but their car gets stuck in the snow. The barn burns down completely. The poor farmer complains that he is cold. The fire department helps: they move his chair closer to the flames. Before that, one catastrophe follows the next. The prizes of the fire department raffle are stolen and no girl wants to take part in the fire department beauty contest. Especially not the pretty ones! But Milos Forman does not make fun of his characters, only of the system they have to live in. This is what happened to The Firemen's Ball like so many great films of the Czech New Wave of the 60s: the works were banned from the cinemas. This is how exile directors, even Oscar-nominated ones, met all over the world. Only not in the CSSR. If you like to read Milan-Kundera, you can learn more about this phase, in which local directors had to start all over again, full of fear in a foreign country with a foreign language. Today the former risk has become a project "culture". But The Firmen's Ball is still much more than just entertainment! A very funny parable, valid at all times and in all countries. Give it a try and think of a bureaucratic madness. And right after that you will think of The Firemen's Ball!