The Cinematography of Sean Price Williams: An Exercise in Grit, Fluidity, and Realism

By Colin Kerekes, Edited by Bridget Zhang

Sean Price Williams began his career shooting for low-budget, unadorned independent films with skeleton crews. These features tended to follow a smaller cast, feature narratives grounded in realism, and contain dialogue-heavy performances emblematic of the mumblecore movement of the 2000s. According to Maria San Filippo, professor of visual and media studies at Emerson College, films of this movement had a “minimalist aesthetic” and “unpolished idiom” that resisted traditional “Hollywood” models - these models being engendered by classic story structures and big budgets (Filippo 2011). These terms are easily applicable to Williams’ imperfect visual style emphasizing a mobile camera and naturalistic environments. Film critic Richard Brody describes Williams as a “cinematographer for many of the best and most significant independent films of the past decade, fiction and documentary” (Folden 2024). In fact, Williams’ personal style is inspired by many prominent documentary filmmakers, such as Albert Maysles, who is known for helping pioneer cinéma vérité (Williams 2023). Even though he mainly works in fiction, films shot by Williams feel as though the viewer is stumbling upon real people undergoing real situations. Therefore, I will be conducting an analysis on three films he has served as DP on which explore overlapping themes of anxiety and the search for personal freedom, to investigate William’s technique of extreme realism. This includes Yeast (2008), Heaven Knows What (2014), and his directorial debut The Sweet East (2023). In each of these works, Sean Price Williams harnesses fluid camera movement reminiscent of art cinema of the 1960s and 1970s in conjunction with heavy zoom effects, naturally sourced lighting, and imperfect exposure. In doing so, he offers an intimate perspective into characters’ psychological dispositions while portraying tension and conflict with a sense of urgency. Williams illustrates a portrait of real life for the viewer, free of glorification and rough around the edges as reality tends to be. 

Cinéma vérité, the style most reminiscent of Williams’ work, is historically utilized in documentary filmmaking. John Hassard, professor of organizational analysis at the University of Manchester explains that on the surface, cinéma vérité can be defined as filmmaking concerned with capturing the truth (Hassard 1998). He cites film scholar Roy Armes, who describes that within cinéma vérité, “an interesting visual style and striking beautiful effects are rejected as a hindrance to the portrayal of the vital truth” (Armes 1966). In other words, pictorial beauty is exchanged for complete realism. Mary Bronstein’s Yeast is the ideal example of cinema at its rawest. Being Williams’ second time as director of photography on a full-length feature film, Yeast follows Rachel (Mary Bronstein), an emotionally unintelligent, perpetually disturbed young woman who is thrust into conflict with her unmotivated roommate Alice (Amy Judd), and her obnoxious, childish friend Gen (Greta Gerwig). The dynamic between each of these unlikeable individuals spirals into biting hatred, physical violence, and cyclical bickering, constructing an experience colored by discomfort and frustration. 

This sense of uncomfortable tension is captured through the viewpoint of a MiniDV camcorder. Through this, it is immediately clear that Williams is not interested in depicting images through a sharp, vivid lens. Instead, scenes are often drenched in grain, blurred, and cloudy. The true artistic prowess emerges from the emotive movement the camcorder offers. Williams tends to shoot handheld, granting him the freedom to follow character actions fluidly and shift easily for the benefit of narrative development. Simultaneously, the motion of the camera can feel clunky, but not at the disservice of the plot. In fact, oftentimes clunky camera movement is deliberate in heightening anxiety and allowing the story to feel cemented in the real world. For instance, a key incident within the film revolves around Gen and Rachel going on a deeply strained camping trip together. As the pair grow tired of each other, the two walk through the forest side by side. Rachel complains incessantly, whether it be about Gen’s lack of planning or the spoiled weather. Eventually, Gen’s annoyance reaches a climax as she hits Rachel across the head before placing her in a chokehold. There is an incredible sense of intimacy associated with Williams’ mobile cinematography as the camera first follows the pair quite freely throughout the scene, mimicking the experience of actually walking with the two. That intimacy is exploited and turned to unease when the camera begins to shake aggressively at the beckon of Gen’s physical aggression. The viewer still feels invested in the scene through means of immersion, however this immersion now serves to make the viewer feel as trapped and overwhelmed as Rachel feels. Though it can appear low-effort, Williams’ distinct camerawork grants the spectator a portal to the world of the film, leaving no room to escape. The aesthetic of invisibility is lost, and instead the viewer is made aware of the camera and meant to connect with it, feeling as though they are eavesdropping upon Rachel’s bitter interactions with her distanced friends. 

Williams’ portrayal of emotion and toxicity is further manifested through the use of close-ups. When Rachel is not outwardly verbalizing her emotions, the viewer is made to infer upon her irritation as the camera looks inwards. Before the camping trip, Rachel and Gen dine at a Burger King. As the two sit at a booth of a closed diner, Rachel condescendingly questions the validity of Gen’s job. Gen is vexed and steps away from her seat, leaving Rachel alone at the booth. The camera then zooms closely on Rachel as she appears perturbed. Her face fills the screen before the camera pans to her hands as she crumbles a Burger King bag with her fist. Though this perspective is mobile, our view is still tightly locked onto Rachel’s actions and feelings. She says little, making every slight variation in expression more notable. Through near proximity, the viewer acknowledges that Rachel is a victim of her own mind who internalizes interactions while hiding behind the facade that she is not the initiator of the friction within her life. No cinematographic choice better elucidates this than the ending shot, where Rachel reaches the realization that Alice no longer needs her nor desires to associate with her. Credits roll over a frozen close-up of Rachel in a dark parking lot, looking off to the side with a certain impotent callousness. This stillness serves as a deliberate contrast to Williams’ constantly moving camera, emphasizing that Rachel’s dissatisfaction will persist for as long as she refuses to recognize her own faults. Essentially, these close, detailed shots force the viewer to see these characters as they truly are. Close often becomes too close, and that is exactly the point. Williams puts the ugly and personal on display. 

Six years following Yeast, Williams collaborated with the Safdie Brothers on Heaven Knows What, a film depicting Harley (Arielle Holmes), a woman living in New York City, as she meanders through a brutal life with an addiction to heroin and a mentally disturbed boyfriend named Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). Though the film had a slightly higher budget, Williams’ cinematographic tendencies set forth in Yeast still apply, including fluid camera movement and ample close-ups. However, there is a clear maturation in technique on display in Williams’ camerawork which consciously alienates Harley in an environment that cares little for her wellbeing. Williams shot Heaven Knows What on a Sony F3, substituting a home-video aesthetic for a more realized look into the dark underbelly of New York City. Interestingly, desolation is not characterized by low-lighting. Instead, Williams relies on high exposure to render the reality of a bleak, unforgiving city in the dead of winter. Harley weaves through sidewalks and across streets amidst a landscape of dead trees and harsh light. This overexposed light creates a sort of haze that washes over the image. As seen through Yeast, dynamic and unblemished picture quality is not a priority. What is seen on screen is in many ways a reflection of the protagonists’ respective mental states. In Harley’s case, she spends most of the film high, tired, or troubled. Therefore, the washed out light expresses the mental fog she experiences. 

Williams experiments with different types of shots as well, including a panning shot across the cityscapes of New York. This sequence, like the majority of the film, is overexposed. The white, cloudy sky dominates over gray skyscrapers to craft a vision of the city that forgoes beautification. After all, a hallmark of Williams’ cinematography involves portraying spaces and characters as they are - vulnerable, imperfect, and even ugly at times. Harley’s existence is unglamorous, so the camera displays it as such. His experimentation extends to an increased usage of the zoom feature. As Harley sits on a busy sidewalk pleading for money, the viewer sees her from afar. Slowly and choppily, the camera zooms inwards onto her as she is obscured by passing pedestrians. The image becomes flattened. As dimension is lost, the viewer is reminded of Harley’s desperation as the weight of the world crushes in on her narratively and visually. Per usual, Williams still employs his classic handheld style for similar functions seen in Yeast. The opening scene of the film features Harley cutting her wrist with a razor blade in an attempt to appease Ilya. As the razor blade digs into her skin, the camera shakes energetically in panic, cutting rapidly between close images of Harley’s pained expression and blood pouring from her wound. The alarming scene is shot with immediacy. The camera is unflinching and as a result, suspense is overflowing. Though what is shown on screen is not always clear, the camera is not meant to be an objective perspective. It rather acts as a representation of Harley’s frenzied state in the wake of a self-destructive choice. It may not depict the entire reality of the situation, but it does depict the reality of Harley’s hysteria. 

Interestingly, Williams does decide to incorporate small amounts of unnatural lighting at the expense of realism. When Harley injects a heroin needle into her arm, a stylized neon light colored with purple and pink hues pervades the screen, washing over her face as she gives into drug-induced euphoria. In some ways, the resulting image is beautiful. It is expressive of the joyful relief Harley must feel when taking drugs. However, the light is also sourced from the room of a cramped apartment that Harley is barely able to call home. It is a reminder that the difficulties she faces are only bound to fester as the heroin rushes through her veins. Therefore, even when Williams foregoes natural lighting, he does so to authentically convey the unsavory truths of the matter. 

The Sweet East marks Williams’ first time directing, and 32nd feature film as director of photography. It is perhaps one of his more fantastical works, centered on a young student named Lillian (Talia Ryder) who embarks on a surrealist journey across the American east coast, placing herself in increasingly strange and unrelated situations which include the basement of a punk political anarchist, a secret neo-nazi rally, an obnoxious independent film set, and more. Here, shot on an Aaton XTR Prod, Williams utilizes all the tricks in his tool box, incorporating shaky camera movement, quick pans, close-ups, zooms, etc. Yet, Williams’ cinematography on The Sweet East differentiates itself from his prior productions, namely because there is a greater reliance on aesthetic beauty and visual variation. Despite this, conventions typical of cinéma vérité still apply. The film opens with a montage of Lillian on a high school field trip to Washington D.C., where Williams uses handheld that is characteristic of the rest of his work. As the camera swings around a school bus, bobs up and down as Lillian jadedly saunters beside the U.S. Capitol, and zooms in on her glued to the screen of an iPhone, the viewer watches these events unfold like a documentary. It is an honest portrayal of modern American youth through the eyes of Williams. Throughout the sequence, Lillian's boredom is palpable amidst the visual chaos of her high school class. While the cinematography overwhelms, the viewer sympathizes with her desire to slip away. Williams’ purpose here is, as is the usual case, to bring the viewer closer to his protagonists’ desires, needs, and issues. 

The film takes a jarring shift into the bizarre when Lillian sings a Wonderland-esque melody to a mirror, acknowledging the camera directly, before leaping into a metaphorical rabbit hole. In an interview conducted at Film Fest Gent in Belgium, Williams explained that he wanted distinct “changes [in camera motion] when Lillian is with the different characters she meets” (Williams 2023). This is evident when Lillian stumbles upon a neo-nazi rally in the middle of a field, where she meets far-right professor Lawrence (Simon Rex). Williams delineates that in scenes with the professor, he put the camera “on a tripod” (Williams 2023). A still camera, though not entirely absent, is generally uncharacteristic of Williams’ work. However, its usage in The Sweet East functions to underscore Lillian’s personal relationship with security and spontaneity. She wanders through life apathetically, though this apathy allows her a sense of flexibility. She welcomes whatever comes her way, even if it happens to be a near-romantic relationship with a neo-nazi professor twice her age. She seeks refuge in his home, and for a short while, begins to feel secure in this dynamic. That is until she gets bored and decides to flee with a duffel bag full of his money. As she hastily races away, the camera transitions to handheld and a sense of chaos is instilled. This dichotomy between stillness and mobility signalizes her agency. Lillian takes initiative in any situation she wanders into. Even if she feels comfortable for a moment, her restlessness tends to build, leaving her to pursue the next absurd encounter.

Though Williams has become more exploratory in his recent works, at the core of his cinematography is the preoccupation with depicting the truth of the characters being filmed. The imperfect camera united with uneven lighting become vehicles for the messy nature of life. Williams is concerned with accentuating a reality that is not sugar coated. Even if it is not the direct reality the viewer is accustomed to, it is the personal realities of the characters we get to know all too well.

Works Cited

Folden, Matt. “Sean Price Williams’s 1000 Movies - Journal.” Metrograph, 18 Mar. 2024, metrograph.com/sean-price-williamss-1000-movies/#:~:text=The%20New%20Yorker%2 0film%20critic,and%20 Nathan%20Silver%27s%20Thirst%20Street. 

Filippo, Aria San. "A cinema of recession: micro-budgeting, micro-drama, and the 'mumblecore' movement." CineAction, no. 85, winter 2011, pp. 2+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A269691785/LitRC?u=anon~b365da7a&sid=googleScholar&xid =b3cf6fb1. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024. 

Hassard, John, and Ruth Holliday. Organization/Representation: Work and Organizations in Popular Culture. SAGE, 1997. 

Williams, Sean Price. “Sean Price Williams on ‘The Sweet East’: ‘The Script Was Written to Make Us Laugh.’” FILM TALK, 13 Mar. 2024, filmtalk.org/2024/03/13/sean-price-williams/.

Female Martyrdom and Sexual Sacrifice in Jiří Menzel’s 1966 Adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal

By Micah Slater, Edited by Lucia Perfetti

In a review of the limited scholarship applied to the work of Czech New Wave director Jiří Menzel, several reading trends emerge: Western scholars are wooed by the Czech “miracle” of the 1960s, often attach his films to the work of philosopher Georges Bataille, and only briefly, if at all, address the symbology and characterization of the women in his films (Bates 37). Jonathan L. Owen, an author with a number of published works on Menzel’s films—specifically his adaptations from the works of Czech contemporary writer Bohumil Hrabal—speaks on Menzel’s portrayal of women most thoroughly, but still, merely to the pursuit of its limits: “Menzel’s representation of women does represent a flaw on the filmmaker’s own terms” (Owen 510). Some scholars ignore the gendered imbalance in his films entirely. Daniel Brennan asserts “all of Menzel’s characters have great depth” (212). Seeing that his work, alongside Owen’s, are the most frequently cited of the few English-language works on Menzel’s filmography, a gap in the scholarship becomes clear. 

In the interest of excoriating this deficit and examining the material causes and implications of this flaw in Menzel’s filmmaking, this paper will move between Owens’ limited readings of the sexual and body politics in Closely Observed Trains (1966) and Brennan’s assessment of sacrifice and martyrdom in the above and Mr. Balthazar’s Death (1966). Between the two films and scholars, a detailed analysis reveals the (mis)treatment of Menzel’s female characters to constitute a sexual sacrifice. In Closely Observed Trains and Mr. Balthazar’s Death, the self-effacement of Menzel’s female characters and their ostensibly willing submission to treatment as sex objects resemble the messianic sacrifice of national subjects in the Czech tradition, modeling for and compelling male characters to perpetuate the sex-death drive of Bataille’s theories of excess and consumption through forms of political martyrdom and individual dissidence. 

Owen’s analysis of the gendered politics in Closely Observed Trains resembles much of the scholarship on male directors with tendencies to underdevelop or disregard female characters. He notes the objectifying nature of the lens; that the women in his Hrabalian adaptations are often more attractive and less “base” than in the original writing; that their bodies are treated with a “formless materiality” that reduces them to sexual objects (Owens 510, Owens 97). Such are the immediately appreciable qualities of the women in the viewing of the film: of the six featured in Closely Observed Trains, one is a mother, one is a wife, three are erotic partners to male characters (erotic used here in the Bataillean regard for non-productive energy expenditure, as this is not exclusively sex), and one is a scarcely-appearing monument to scopophilia. Some are without explicit names. It is this set of patriarchal sexual norms from which Owen assumes Menzel was unable to sufficiently deviate. In Mr. Balthazar’s Death, the roles are reduced due in part to the length of the film, but nonetheless his women are remanded to sex or invalidity: an older woman drinks to the point of belligerence, well past being of any sexual value, while a younger sneaks off with her lover to withdraw from the spectacle of a motorcycle race. In extant writing, these portrayals are rightly cast as limiting and demeaning. However, in an analysis interested in the ecosystem and specific nature of these limits, Menzel’s meditation on sacrifice and martyrdom becomes relevant.

In Brennan’s article “Jiří Menzel’s Treatment of Sacrifice,” his working definition of sacrifice is the performance of “acts for political and social improvement at the expense of [a person’s] life” (208). He contextualizes these acts against the contradicting spheres of the political, cast as “distant [and] overbearing,” and the personal, the “mundane private relations” of intimate care relationships (Brennan 208). He argues that Menzel cautions against unconditional valorization of the sacrifice of dissidents and that, in order to perform martyrdom against the political, the interpersonal is inevitably disregarded. Brennan remains focused on the dialectics of these two spheres, viewing sex as the boast of the personal, and the political; an overhanging force to stymie the care relations fostered by the sexual-erotic experiences of his characters. 

While he does acknowledge that Menzel allows for play between the two, Brennan continually fails to recognize the established neglect of Menzel’s female characters, further remiss in that their narratives remarkably resemble his selfsame definition of sacrifice. (He uses as an example but doesn’t deign to name Zdenka (Jitka Zelenohorská), the station telegrapher and recipient of the infamous rubber stamps in Closely Watched Trains.) While there may be friction between this statement and the base survival of Menzel’s women through their narratives, it is not misplaced to note that they have endured a form of expense: in their mistreatment, they are, in a way, martyred to the erotic use-case of their bodies. Their sexual encounters are transformative points at which they engender political radicalization or personal growth in their male partners. Brennan also notes British Slavist Richard Pynsent’s diagnosis of a “martyr complex in historical Czech notions of national identity… a messianic complex around the blood sacrifice of various national Czech heroes,” an argument that would then certainly support Menzel’s implicit and, in Owen’s reading, unconscious treatment of his women as sacrificial bodies (Brennan 219). Menzel’s Bataillean synthesis of sex and death further aligns the sacrificial expense of a life with the sexual labor that then transforms his male characters. His ever-classic fixation on the French literal translation of orgasm to “little death” resounds (Owen 95).

At first reading, a connection between a purposeful but non-productive erotic expenditure and a Bataillean approach to the “truth of eroticism”—the squandering of excess energy—may seem contradictory (Owen 86). In fact, Bataille argues, this sense of waste is “integral to the pleasurable erotic experience” (Owen 84). If Menzel’s female characters are serving a sacrificial purpose, then the energy is not wasted, and therefore, the encounters are rendered as productive and by definition un-erotic. This goes so far as to be potentially rendered null in the face of  Menzel’s vocal resistance to the Soviet “productive man” (Owen 83). If his portrayed sexual encounters are motivating, and therefore in pursuit of a producible goal, what is between his erotically active cast and the gormless productivity of the characters in Socialist Realism films? Brennan offers an answer. As mentioned above, he argues that Menzel’s films of the 1960s regard sacrifice, even in its conventional and established definition, as waste itself, and inevitably results in the forgoing of the personal sphere—where Menzel places so much importance. Brennan asserts, regarding the death of  Closely Watched Trains protagonist Miloš Hrma (Václav Neckár), specifically as a martyr to the cause of the resistance, that “a young person, brimful of potential [...] has been fooled [...] into too lightly giving away their life” (213). The implication therein is that his successful erotic experience with female resistance fighter Viktoria Freie (Nada Urbánková), was a performed martyrdom that compelled him to his sacrifice; one that then ended his life. Therefore, a bifurcated picture of the nature of sacrifice emerges between Bataillean philosophy and Menzel’s own national complexes: female characters martyr themselves to unproductive sexual experience, a waste of their youthful virility and also a grand symbolic gesture in the Czechoslovakian national context. The gesture then motivates their male partners, as constituents of the same beliefs Menzel implicitly holds, to make their own wasteful sacrifices. Thus, Menzel splits the national martyr complex along gendered lines, restricting the sacrifices of Czech women to their erotic roles in men’s lives.

In Mr. Balthazar’s Death, the political—as in, the structural system in dialogue with the personal sphere—is reframed from the Nazi occupation to a motorbike race (Brennan 210). The spectacle of the race is presented as if akin to the political exploits of sacrifice or war—everyone is there for, and chattering relentlessly about, the past and potential gruesome deaths of the riders–reifying the national Czech sacrificial complex. He also refocuses his erotic waste on a couple, a pair of side characters who miss the race entirely to sneak off into the woods and expend Bataillean erotic energy. While they’re gone, the crowd gets what they came for: a rider, the eponymous Mr. Balthazar (uncredited), dies on the track [00:22:49]. This is tantamount to the form of martyrdom Miloš expresses in his own death, a public and pointless expenditure of (not as, but still) youth and virility. The political spectacle is missed by the lovers, who subsequently return to the track and see both the man motionless and the spectators leaving. They appear to be the only ones, other than the medical staff collecting his body, who hold any empathy for the rider and run to his body [00:23:24]. Here, Menzel presents a synthesis of feeling between the two forms of sacrifice. In the sexual sacrifice of his female partner, the young man is enabled of resistance in the form of empathy—a personal dissidence from his older, sexless, detached peers. In her sexual sacrifice, the young woman identifies with this dead rider, martyred to the national interest in the same way she has martyred herself to her partner’s sexual experience. Again, not a conventional death, but a marked rift between the politically living (the spectators) and the interpersonal dead (the couple and the rider). In a strange way, this death has liberated these young people from imbrication into the political quagmire of their elders. This evokes further considerations on Menzel’s—and other New Wave directors’—break with their predecessors, particularly in their ideological foundations. 

Other than fictionally condemning older generations for their fanatic indulgence in wanton political sacrifice, the Czech New Wave investment in the recontextualization of socialism from the state has been well-documented throughout the 1960s. As Robin Bates writes, “from 1962 to 1968, a basic goal of the Czech filmmakers was to liberate the ideals of socialism from the reified state in which those ideals had been trapped” (37). Closely Observed Trains casts further backwards than the context of 1950s Socialist Czechoslovakia, but between these two films, it’s evident both Hrabal and Menzel have little interest in literalism in terms of critiquing controlling political systems. Owens notes “one of Hrabal’s early ambitions was, it seems, to “colloquialize” surrealism” (496). Bates also includes a quote from critic Penelope Gilliat, observing that Czech contemporary audiences “seem to start from the assumption that everyone in the audience notices everything, that everyone is sick to death of public utterances that nibble around the edges of things as they are, and that there is not a man left in the country who could honestly be deceived” (39). Between the two, the clear inference is that both of these films inform audience readings not merely of the oppression of the Nazi period and the gladiatorial politics of the race, but the creative limitations of the generation and the decade of filmmakers preceding the New Wave. In both films, the older generations hold to the precepts of homogeneity and productive output, disapproving of frivolous sex and valorizing the death of martyrs as purposeful in the political context. 

A critical interrogation of the women of Jiří Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains and Mr. Balthazar’s Death can seem, at times, an exercise in making mountains out of molehills. They are hardly considered, barely named, and almost exclusively exist in the context of sex, eroticism, or male visual pleasure. Some scholarship has ignored this; others have commented on it in summary as a personal failure of Menzel’s to elide patriarchal sexual conservatism in his otherwise emancipatory impetus. Other more studied elements of his work, however, provide scaffolding to critically interrogate his female characters beyond their marginalization: between Owen’s readings of Bataille’s erotic waste and Brennan’s examinations of Menzel’s treatment of sacrifice, a refocused analysis of women and girls in his films is possible. Here, they are revealed to function as sexual sacrifices to their male partners, centered in the national preoccupation with martyrdom and messianic sacrifice as assessed by Pynsent. Menzel himself appears to hold a distinctly Bataillean perspective on the literal martyrdom of his male subjects, ending their lives in pointless politicized acts of spectacle and resistance, expending their youthful and virile energy in abject waste. Bataille’s assertion of erotic pleasure stemming from such waste allows this principle to backwards apply to sexual encounters between men and women, enforcing the wasteful erotic expenditure of Menzel’s female characters as another form of sacrifice. The deaths and sacrifices of these young people also serve as subtle critiques of the preceding generation of film-makers and -goers, whose capitulation to state depictions of socialism is compared to the spectatorial demand for meaningful death and (re-)productive sex. While Menzel tactfully criticizes both, his own sexual conservatism and disregard for his female host is equally illustrative: to Jiří Menzel, the martyrdom of eroticized women in the process of male maturation is implicit, informed by national preoccupations and social orders. It is through this initial self-effacing sacrifice that these men are then able to become wasted martyrs themselves, bodies on bodies in a heap at the end of the Czechoslovakian New Wave. 

Works Cited

Bates, Robin. "The Ideological Foundations of the Czech New Wave." Journal of the University Film Association, vol. 29, no. 3, 1977, pp. 37–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687379.

Brennan, Daniel. "Jiří Menzel’s Treatment of Sacrifice." Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe), vol. 9, no. 3, 2019, pp. 208–220, doi:10.2478/ebce-2019-0018.

"Closely Observed Trains.", directed by Jiří Menzel, Ústřední půjčovna filmů, 1966a.

"Mr. Balthazar's Death." directed by Jiří Menzel, 1966.

Owen, Jonathan L. "Closely Observed Bodies: Corporeality, Totalitarianism and Subversion in Jiří Menzel's 1960s Adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal." Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes, vol. 51, no. 4, 2009, pp. 495–511. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40871461.

Owen, Jonathan L. "Jiří Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains (1966); Hrabal and the Heterogeneous." Avant-Garde to New Wave. Berghahn Books, 2011. JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qd7tp.8.