Designing a Forest Without Trees: Scenography and Prefabricated Space in Věra Chytilová’s Panelstory

This article examines the representation of the Prague housing estate Jižní Město (South City) in Věra Chytilová’s film Prefab Story (Panelstory, 1979) through the metaphor of the forest. Although the neighborhood is a product of socialist urban planning and industrial construction, the film presents it as an environment that shares several structural and experiential features with a forest. The analysis focuses on the spatial organization of the housing estate and on the vertical and horizontal axes created by high rise buildings and construction infrastructure. The neighborhood is also portrayed as a highly permeable social space inhabited by a wide range of residents whose lives intersect in unfinished public areas. The article further considers the role of natural elements such as air, earth, water, and fire, which appear throughout the film as forces that are not fully controlled within the newly built environment. The near absence of vegetation contrasts with the symbolic return of the forest, most notably in the discovery of deer antlers within the estate. Ultimately, the film presents South City as a technological forest whose ambiguous character allows it to be perceived either as a place of belonging or as an alien and threatening environment.