Who Will Watch the Watchmen? Dalibor, or the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin

In the fourth and final instalment of Karel Vachek’s not-so-little Little Capitalist Tetralogy, preparations for an opera performance in the Czech capital’s art-nouveau National Theatre become the occasion for a reflection on rebels, dissidents, and others subversives who stand in battle, heroically and sometimes tragically, against majority opinion, established rules, or powerful institutions. "As the camera wanders over, around and through Prague’s lavish National Theatre, director J.A. Pitínský coaches singers through a rehearsal of Bedřich Smetana’s tragic opera Dalibor. Intercut with the tale of the 15th-century knight who, imprisoned, refused to name names, Vachek interviews, on the plush red seats of the empty theatre, a whole series of latter-day rebels" (National Gallery of Art, Washington) "Who Will Watch the Watchmen? presents an array of original thinkers musing about the current state of the State. Vachek is particularly interested in oppositional battles, ether won, lost or ongoing, and in airing minority opinions" (Pacific Film Archive). Colour, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 220 mins. + intermission.