In the late 1960s, Czech and Slovak films dominated the festival circuit and, in the space of three years, won two Hollywood Academy Awards ("A Shop on the High Street" and "Closely Observed Trains"). At the same time, Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball gained an enthusiastic following. Yet these were only the most visible aspects of a movement that extended from realism to surrealism and to the experimental (and feminist) works of Vera Chytilova. This study of the most significant film movement in post-war Central and East European cinema examines the origins and development of the Czech New Wave and the Slovak Wave of the late 1960s against a background of the political and cultural developments that led to the Prague Spring of 1968. The book also examines key formative aspects of the history of Czech and Slovak cinema from the 1930s onward. This second edition has been fully updated to include accounts of films that were banned at the time of the original research or had to wait twenty years for their release. There is also a consideration of the work of those 'New Wave' directors who were able to continue their work in the years following the Soviet invasion and a discussion of its significance in the context of production since the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989.