Snow White and Seven Dwarfs

In 1933, Oldřich Kmínek directed, at the request of the Chicago film company, three fairy tales intended to fill a gap in the children’s film market – Little Red Riding Hood (lost), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and his magnum opus with ballet passages and psychedelic sequences, The Gingerbread House. Both preserved films are marked by a high degree of amateurishness, likely enhanced by a lack of funding. The inability to properly mix post-synchronisation, strange camerawork, or thematically imprecise acting are just a few of the characteristics that push Kmínek’s bizarre creations into a realm of such awkwardness that they become a truly astonishing experience for film enthusiasts. Audiovisual trash? Guilty pleasure? You can decide after the screening, but it will definitely be worth it!

The “Czech Ed Wood,” Oldřich Kmínek (1892–1948), had begun his film career as an actor in 1918, but the following year already turned to directing. Over his twenty-year career, he filmed one movie a year on average, thereby smoothly transitioning from silent to sound cinema. He often directed sentimental love melodramas and teenage romances, frequently based on his own ideas and scripts. Unfortunately, he belonged to second-rate filmmakers, whose works rarely achieved artistic or technical quality. Nevertheless, he remains one of the pioneers and producers of Czech cinema.