This weekend saw the passing of Milos Stehlik, cofounder of Facets Multimedia. I don’t have the space in this post to enumerate all the ways that Stehlik influenced Chicago film culture—such as his championing of films and filmmakers from around the world (especially eastern Europe), his role in establishing the International Children’s Film Festival, and his contributions to WBEZ—so instead I’ll briefly note how Facets Multimedia has influenced me.
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator An early (1967) film by Dušan Makavejev, the master of the eastern European dirty joke (WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Montenegro). The passionate affair of a telephone operator and a Marxist rodent exterminator is intercut with lectures on criminology and sexology, with occasional cooking lessons. It’s very funny and, with its ragged arrangement of warring styles and ideologies, very original: it’s like a smutty, sticky-fingered Godard. —Dave Kehr
