Screen Picks

Post-Communism Film Series (Wed.-Sun., April 24–28, 8 p.m., free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) From the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany and Russia, the films of International House’s post-Communism film series demonstrate both the disillusionment and the sense of possibility left in the wake of Communism’s fall. Jan Svankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure, screening Thursday, and Veit Helmer’s Tuvalu (Saturday) function almost without dialogue, while Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies (screening Friday, reviewed at right) alternates between moments of visual poetry and searching, philosophical monologues. Perhaps it’s a matter of finding a new language to replace the old, or simply of facing an open future and not knowing what to say.

Conspirators -- the fourth of Svankmajer’s features to screen in the region in the last several months, though you’d have needed to clock a few miles to see them all -- is the only one not based on a traditional tale, and deals with his familiar themes of hunger and desire, this time in the form of six current-day Prague residents and their increasingly bizarre perversions. Tuvalu, which screened in the PFWC a few years back, most frequently earns comparisons to Delicatessen and Terry Gilliam, though not always positive ones. Alexei Balabanov’s Brother, which closes out the series on Sunday, hit the top of the Russian box office in 1997 with a tale of a soldier-turned-hitman in post-Soviet St. Petersburg.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Wed., May 1, 4:15 p.m. & 9:15 p.m.; Thu., May 2, 4:15 p.m.; Sun., May 5, 4:15 p.m.; Mon., May 6, 7 p.m., County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown, 215-345-6789, www.countytheater.org) The creation of then-23-year-old Lotte Reininger, the 1926 The Adventures of Prince Achmed is sometimes considered the first animated feature. You won’t see any digital trickery, but like a lot of early filmmakers, Reininger had a plentiful bag of low-tech effects, in this case involving experiments on film stock with wax and sand, and animated paper cutouts. With the art form increasingly dominated by CGI effects that strive for mundane realism, it’s worth remembering how enjoyable its opposite can be. (The Monday night screening will be followed by the County’s monthly discussion group.)

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