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A witty farce about the French prime minister’s parrot, a witness to the Munich Conference, who reveals its secrets decades later, wounded national pride and the perils of filmmaking.
Sir P, a 90-year-old parrot who once belonged to the French prime minister responsible for signing the 1938 Munich Agreement which forced Czechoslovakia to cede much of its borders to Germany, finds himself at a press conference in Prague as a living relic of the time. Repeating the controversial statements of his former owner, Sir P gets kidnapped by Pavel, a disgraced Czech journalist, who uses the bird to revive his own career and failed marriage, causing a diplomatic scandal.
Starting as a light-hearted absurdist comedy the film switches to a mockumentary about the filming of the Czech-French co-production which is plagued with problems not least of which is the lack of money, the principal actor’s allergy to the feathered star and a disgruntled crew developing new theories about the 1938 event and provocative generalizations about the Czech national character. Part irreverent history lesson and part movie business satire this is a witty, multi-layered farce by Petr Zelenka with an engagingly cynical humour which cuts across national borders.
Followed by a debate ‘Munich, Tragic Myth or Diplomatic Victory?’ with Vit Smetana, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, and historian Peter Neville, author of Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt To Prevent the Second World War, and Eduard Benes and Tomas Masaryk. Makers of the Modern World.
Tickets £14.10 adult £13.0 student/retired £7.70 child, available from link below
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