“A Bagful of Fleas,” one of Věra Chytilová’s first shorts, plays with narrative conventions and depicts, in cinéma vérité style, in fashion at that time, the day to day life of a young female textile workers’ hostel in communist Czechoslovakia, at the beginning of the 1960s. This fresh and stimulating universe is reflected through the young Eva, recently arrived among the collective of girls and attached to her camera, from which she never separates. We don’t see Eva, yet we hear her, through nonchalant comments or short discussions with her colleagues. In this way, together with her, we are introduced into a world overflowing with semi-anarchic energy, wherein the young workers dream of handsome princes while they are initiated into the secrets of their field by the more experienced women of the factory. And we are witnessing, with surprise, their constant rebellions against the numerous additional tasks assigned by the Communist Party to the young Czechoslovakians and to the self-ironical casualness with which they relate to their own femininity, rather instinctively than by virtue of ideas of emancipation. Věra Chytilová’s protagonists are so likeable in their lack of preconceptions and their desire to display their distinct personality that, up towards the end, we almost forget that they live in a society which would rather have them evened out in the name of some general collective good. “The Ceiling,” which completes the program dedicated to the filmmaker within the festival, is her graduation film and, at the same time, a thematic and stylistic preparation for “A Bagful of Fleas,” as it presents, in similar documentary style, the story of a young female model whom men – and not only them – would rather have reduced to the status of a beautiful doll, but one devoid of personal opinions and feelings. (by Andrei Rus)