I watched …and Give my Love to the Swallows today and I felt good again about telling someone that I love them. Jaromil Jires is a contemporary of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) that define the Czech New Wave: Milos Forman, Jan Nemec, Jiri Menzel, Evald Schorm…
The main character of …and Give my Love to the Swallows portrays the real life Maruska Kuderikova, played with poetic authenticity by the beautiful Magda Vásáryová. Kuderikova was a young idealistic resistance activist during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia (story takes place in a region of today’s Slovakia), who is able to sneak out her diaries from the prison. The story weaves itself inbetween the prison and Maruska’s memories of family, happiness, rolling hills of wheat, love, hope, and in general, all those aspects of the human life that make it worth living.
[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Sep 22, 2005 ]