The Dryden will screen Siréna (The Strike, Karel Steklý, Czechoslovakia 1947, 77 min.) as part of the Nitrate Picture Show. The feature will be preceded by Žhavý jícen (Hot Throat, Jiří Lehovec, Czechoslovakia 1939, 12 min.): "An industrial short produced by Pražská železáÅ™ská společnost (Prague Ironworks Company) in 1939, the film contains footage from the shorts Výroba oceli (Steel Production, 1939)—today presumed lost—and Poklady zemÄ› (Treasures of the Earth, 1939), both directed by Karel Kohout."

"We greatly admired this picture, which resembles Carol Reed's film about the lives of Welsh miners, The Stars Look Down. This is that film's Czech counterpart, so to speak—a dignified and an even more brilliant counterpart, with its proletarian story about the working-class Hudcový family. It is an intense, extensively detailed, and often riveting picture about the bitter cycle of existence for the poor, a picture of misery and grief, warmed only by the rays of human love and hardened by the hate that compels one to clench their fists and come to blows—perhaps even wrongly." — Jan Žalman, Kino, May 9, 1947

[source: George Eastman Museum calendar, 2017-May-5]