She Grazed Horses on Concrete (Slovak: Pásla kone na betóne) is a film which lays out serious topics that include a woman's capacity to hold her own in society, sexual mores, and abortion, and balances them with comedy and irony in proportions that instantly made it one of the biggest domestic blockbusters in Slovak cinema.
A quarter of a century later, its DVD release sold out within weeks. The film, directed by the reputed Štefan Uher, made the women at its center stage stand for humankind as matter-of-factly as much of Central European filmmaking had been portraying men's worlds, the quiet turnaround never even became a talking point. It was also the first film that employed a regional variety of the language that would be naturally used where the story took place, which provided an additional layer of humor whose novelty had people rolling in the aisles.
Its baffling title quotes a verse from a fresh folk song about a woman striving to accomplish impossible feats. Attempts to render it in English resulted in the film being shown and quoted under a range of titles that have included She Kept Crying for the Moon, She Kept Asking for the Moon, A Ticket to Heaven (also the erroneous A Ticket to the Heaven), and Concrete Pastures.
The film was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Silver Prize.
Read more about She Grazed Horses On Concrete: Plot, Director, Screenplay, Cast, Release Dates
Famous quotes containing the words horses and/or concrete:
“Listen to me. You come into this town, and you think youre headed somewhere, dont you? You think youre gonna get there with a gun, but youre not. Get me. You know why, cause you got thousand dollar bills pasted right across your eyes. And someday youre gonna stumble and fall down in the gutter, right where the horses have been standin, right where you belong.”
—Ben Hecht (18931964)
“The Dada object reflected an ironic posture before the consecrated forms of art. The surrealist object differs significantly in this respect. It stands for a mysterious relationship with the outer world established by mans sensibility in a way that involves concrete forms in projecting the artists inner model.”
—J.H. Matthews. Object Lessons, The Imagery of Surrealism, Syracuse University Press (1977)