According to IMDb, Jan Nemec's A Report on the Party and Guests was released on the same date as Vera Chytilova's Daisies: December 30, 1966. I'm not exactly sure if they were part of an intentional double feature or not, but I could easily see them both fitting on the same bill. There's enough contrast (Report's low-key, realistic monochrome vs. Daisies' wild eye-popping colors and visual flamboyance) to make them distinctive, but also an underlying connective thread in their respective bold and ingenious critiques of a status quo imposed by the dominant centralized authority of the Soviet-back Czechoslovakian government regime. That sly and subliminally rebellious questioning of authority turned out to be too much for the censors to allow a clear passage to be seen by members of the general public, so both films were immediately shut down from any further distribution for a period of time.
The "Prague Spring" uprising of early 1968 provided a brief reprieve from the ban for A Report on the Party and Guests, but that window of opportunity turned out to be very short-lived once tanks and troops backed by the USSR rolled in to suppress the masses and assert their control over the populace. It's pretty remarkable to reflect on all this from the distance of nearly 50 years after the fact, that such an elliptical and universal depiction of modern social conformity could stir up such a harsh response from ruling powers who must have felt quite vulnerable and insecure in their positions, to react as they did. By the standards of barbed political satire, this film is not exceptionally pointed or specific in its accusations, and I think a case can be made that Nemec is not even aiming his lampoon at the bosses calling the shots as he is at the too-readily compliant citizens who placidly submit to their orders, failing to realize the potential strength of their own resistance if they would choose to organize, resist and push back even just a little.
For a more detailed (but mostly spoiler-free) commentary on the film itself, I'll direct you to my review of A Report on the Party and Guests from 2012 so you can read my impressions upon first viewing at the time. And here's an officially-approved snippet, courtesy of our authoritative and arbitrary curators over at The Criterion Collection:
Since I have no personal connection at all to the temperature of the times when A Report on the Party and Guests was released, any surmise I can offer on why the film met with such stern condemnation is only conjecture, based on second, third or fourth hand accounts. But the ruckus it managed to stir up certainly wins my respect, even if the second half of the film (which is actually quite short, a mere 70 minutes) seems to bog down a bit in slightly tedious expounding of its central point. When an artist chooses to embark upon a path of deliberate absurdity and self-conscious allegory, substantial discipline must be exercised or else the project risks a descent into overly precious, self-indulgent wankery. I don't think that this movie ever crosses that line, but the prolonged expounding on that theme may not immediately click with some viewers. Even if that's your reaction upon first viewing, I think this is one that's easy enough to revisit to say "give it a second chance" if necessary. The film speaks truth across cultures and generations, and has a lot to say about how and why we choose to go along to get along instead of rising up to fight the power. I'll have more to say about this film later this summer when Trevor Berrett and I discuss Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave.