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THURSDAY

For more than 10 years, Czech animator Michaela Pavlátová has created painterly vignettes on the human condition. Living half the time in Prague—well-known for its citizens’ prodigious talents in the medium—Pavlátová utilizes a subtle and scratchy style more akin to the National Film Board of Canada’s animated output than the surrealistic puppet-dominated worlds created by her countrymen. Focusing on your typical male-female communication breakdowns, Pavlátová’s films pointedly forgo dialogue in favor of playful visual symbols. In Recùi Recùi Recùi, an arguing couple spout sharp-toothed blobs that devour one another in a crowded cafe filled with the multicolored amorphics of conversation. In Repete, Pavlátová’s signature wavy humanoids play out scenarios in rhythmic cycles suggestive of destructive relationships: They are doomed to repeat the same mistakes and enslaved to their own desires. Share in Pavlátová’s obsession with dysfunction at 7:30 p.m. at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, 3900 Spring of Freedom St. NW. Free. (202) 274-9100. (Chad Molter)