Audition

A short documentary by Miloš Forman, among the earliest works of the Czech New Wave and made just before Black Peter. The method is simple: Forman staged a music audition in Prague and filmed the young women who turned up. The people in front of the camera are not actors; they came to sing, and most had never stood at a microphone before. Forman is not telling a success story and not mocking anyone; he simply watches people wait, tense up and miss their turn. The second half is a brass band rehearsal, where the same thing happens: people trying to do something correctly and not quite managing it. This is the source of all of Forman's later cinema. Casting non-professionals, turning a real event into fiction, and refusing to make anyone a hero all start here. Who it is for: viewers curious about how the Czech New Wave was assembled and how the line between documentary and fiction was blurred. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a story. It is short, scattered and deliberately inconclusive; nobody is chosen and nobody arrives anywhere.