PTA et al. - Na stopě ničeho

Is it absolute creative chaos suggesting the entire crew was under the influence of intoxicating substances or had simply gone mad - or is it a perfectly calculated subversive film work where everything somehow makes incomprehensible sense, where you feel you're about to grasp it, yet it always slips away? Only true master storytellers can walk this creative tightrope - and it is precisely they who create cult films that inspire academic studies, where viewers discover ever-new meanings, and filmmakers draw inspiration from one another.

This double feature is exactly that right-wrong, nutty-not-nutty thing.

The absolutely bizarre action sci-fi comedy Repo Man from 1984 by nonconformist director Alex Cox, starring a young Emilio Estevez, is a nonsensical punk-rock ride through L.A. The protagonist, disgusted by consumer society and deadened by routine work, takes a job as a debt collector and finds himself in a panoptical world of unpredictable and extraordinarily dangerous characters and insane cat-and-mouse games, perhaps orchestrated by cosmic forces.

Hidden Figures from 2014 by Paul Thomas Anderson is a devilishly masterful adaptation of the filmmaker's literary favorite - the supposedly unfilmable Thomas Pynchon. This grotesque noir psychedelic drug-fueled haze is dominated by Joaquin Phoenix as a private detective.