I believe Jiří Trnka’s short film “The Hand” was viewed as subversive because of the moral of the story in this short film. To summarize, the puppet in this story is being constantly pressured by this hand to create more hand sculptures, whilst all the puppet wants to create is their own pottery. Eventually he becomes forced to create what the hand wants, and is eventually killed by the thing he loves. I think this story reflects how creatives at the time in Czechoslovakia were also being pressured to only create things that positively reflected their government and faced punishment for doing otherwise. So upon seeing this, I understand why the Czech government immediately tried to cover it up.
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