Čekání na déšť movie poster
In 1978, director Karel Kachyňa made two films from one budget: the summer comedy Setkání v červenci (Meeting in July) and a poetic story of an adolescent young girl called Čekání na déšť (Waiting for the Rain). The protagonist of the story is 12-year-old Alena, who spends the hot summer holidays alone at home in a Prague apartment complex. Alena engages in both real and invented encounters with her neighbours, primarily the blind Taraba and soldier Pavel, who is just getting over a relationship heartbreak. The anxiously awaited rains permit Alena to momentarily forget the complicated adult world, with which she is having her first contact…
Karel Vaca’s poster design is centered around a female face masked by an umbrella silhouette which accentuates the pair of eyes. In a pretty literal translation of the title, this is accompanied by another smaller umbrella showing a clock face. The top half is dominated by the dazzling typography in Aki Lines. In “DÉŠŤ” (“rain”), each of the six inlines is filled with a different color, creating a rainbow effect (see also the Sesame Street Fever record cover).
All diacritical marks — both the acutes and the háčeks — are flattened to macron-like overbars, as if it were Vaca’s intention to support David Jonathan Ross’s claim made at ATypI 2017: “90% of the importance of a diacritic is just to see something there”.
