When his love is lured away by a wealthy Czech count, Giacomo, a Venetian gondolier, sets out to find her and get his revenge. He arrives in the Czech lands where he finds an abandoned little boy who he brings up as his own. When after many years they return to the same place, all the pieces of the puzzle start to come together in a dramatic finale. Closely following Mácha’s intricate story of thwarted and unfulfilled love, insanity, death and murder, the director complements it with evocative camerawork taking in photogenic Venice and the enigmatic Czech landscape. With live accompaniment from Irena and Vojtěch Havel (piano, violoncello and viola de gamba)& KAREL HYNEK MÁCHA: MAY POETRY READING(Translated by Marcela Šulak, Twisted Spoon Press, 2005)Compared to Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Poe, called Lautreamonts "elder brother" by the Czech Surrealists, Karel Hynek Macha (1810-1836) was the greatest Czech Romantic poet, and arguably the most influential of any poet in the language. May, his epic masterpiece, was published in April 1836, just seven months before his death. Considered the "pearl" of Czech poetry, it is a tale of seduction, revenge, patricide, and a paean to his homeland.

Event is part of The New Czech Cinema 2010, the 14th Czech Film Festival in London.