A Report on the Party and the Guests

A Report on the Party and Guests (, also known in English as The Party and the Guests) is a 1966 Czechoslovakian political satire film directed by Jan Němec. It was banned in Czechoslovakia from 1966 to 1968 for being an allegory of socialist regimes. After a short release during the Prague Spring, it was banned again, this time for twenty years. In 1974, director Jan Němec was forced to leave the country. The film was entered in the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was aborted owing to the events of May 1968 in France. Plot A group of four men and three women are having a picnic in a field. One of the women says they should get going so they will make it to a celebration on time, and the group cleans up and walks into the woods. A man emerges from the trees and, smiling, links arms with Karel, one of the picnickers. Several other men appear and forcibly direct the picnickers to a clearing. The group of men bring a table and chair out of the woods and place it in the clearing. Their leader sits down and asks the picnickers if they are enjoying their trip to the country. Karel demands to be told what is going on, but the leader's second-in-command just tells the picnickers to spread out. A male picnicker wearing glasses separates the women from the men and arranges each group alphabetically before stepping forward. The second-in-command draws a circle around the six other picnickers, and the leader says they cannot cross the line. Karel tells the leader to leave them alone, but the other picnickers ask him to stop being defiant. The picnicker wearing glasses diplomatically tries to discover why he and his friends have been stopped, and the leader eventually says this has all been a joke. One of the female picnickers says she needs to go to the bathroom and is let out of the circle and led into the woods. Karel says he is leaving and crosses the line without permission. The leader goes after Karel, who knocks him down, so he sics his followers on Karel. They push Karel around and are throwing him in the air when the woman returns from the woods with a man. He tells the leader, who is named Rudolf, to apologize to the picnickers, saying he had sent Rudolf to show them a shortcut to his birthday celebration. The host tells the picnickers he adopted Rudolf the day before and apologizes himself. The picnickers respond by putting the blame for the interaction in the clearing on Karel as much as on Rudolf.