In 1965 and 1967, Czechoslovakia won its first Hollywood Oscars – for A Shop on the High Street and Closely Observed Trains. In the same period, Miloš Forman’s A Blonde in Love (1965) and The Firemen’s Ball (1967) were also short-listed, and at Cannes in 1968 three Czech films were in competition. It was a golden era for Czech and Slovak cinema and, for a time, names such as Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, and Věra Chytilová were up there among the leading art-house directors.
Feature by Peter Hames

We talk to Xavier Mendik, organiser of the Cine-Excess festival, which mixes academic conference on all aspects of cult cinema and screenings of films at the ICA (London), May 1-3.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

While the BFI’s Pop Goes the Revolution season was a slightly fluffy affair offering little insight into French cinema and May 68, this month sees the Southbank cinema host part of the Fashion in Film Festival, which conversely offers an impressively rich and well thought out programme.
Preview by Virginie Sélavy

A look at some early works by the director of Swimming Pool and 8 femmes.
Review by Peter Momtchiloff

The Mai 68s fit so perfectly with our 40th-anniversary-of-May-68 issue that some of you may think we made them up. But they’re real, honest, and they describe themselves rather brilliantly as ‘the sound of Dinosaur Jr if fronted by Ulrike Meinhof’. Here, they pick their ten favourite films.