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Presented from a new 4K restoration of the film from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive. Pavel Jurácek's free-form and darkly surreal adaptation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels also channels Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka to create one of Czechoslovak cinema's most audacious and disturbing works. Lost on a country road, a man finds himself trapped in a nightmare world that mirrors Communist-era Czechoslovakia. This transgressive film, like his earlier surrealist triumph Josef Kilián (1963), greatly provoked the authorities and was promptly 'banned forever'. Jurácek, co-writer of Czech masterworks Daisies, Ikarie XB 1 and A Jester's Tale, was never allowed to direct another film - but his legacy and his commitment to poetic and political truth, remains one of the most profound, invigorating and important in all Czech cinema.

A Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)
102 min
Lemuel Gulliver has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.

A Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)
102 min
Lemuel Gulliver has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.