Expulsion from Paradise

An inspiring memory of our first collaboration with director Věra Chytilová (her first film that we worked on was “Kopytem sem kopytem tam”). The director wanted a beautiful, artistically rendered poster to go with her video-camera film. She had a very clear idea of what she wanted right from the beginning – a poster in the style of Dutch Masters of the 16th century. A night scene complete with fires that, however, was far from typical of the actual film. We went to the editing room. We wanted to have a look at the material and realised that the film was rather crude in appearance. Shot on video. I had a completely different idea of what the poster should be like. We argued for a while and each was pushing for own ideas. I finally gave in and promised to try both. I wanted to use digital stills from the movie. Everything had to be done very quickly. The director called the next day and surprisingly was interested in just the “digi” version.