Czech Republic

JIRI TRNKA’S 1950 puppet animation film PRINCE BAJAJA
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From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
A disembodied, ‘live’ hand invades the life of an artist-puppet, instructing him what to create, bringing him TV and newspapers (filled with ‘Hand’ activities), finally compelling him to make sculptures of itself. After his death in frustration, the Hand gives him an ornate State funeral as a great artist of the people. A courageous early work of the Czech renaissance.Read More »

Miss Susan inherits the hotel from her auntie Barbara. At fist she thinks it’s the well known modern hotel Blue Star. Early on she finds out it’s another one with the same name, but much smaller and besides it’s forlorn. Instead of guests and personnel the hotel is freely occupied by three young men. Susan let them stay if they work for her, because she is determined to reopen the hotel. Soon first guest, Vladimir Rychta, arrives to the hotel and wants to arrange wedding feast there. Nevertheless his obstinate fiancée refuses to come to the old hotel and stay in the modern one. As the feast is canceled Mr. Rychta invites Susan to dine together. He becomes so enchanted by her, that he asks her to marry him. In the morning Mr. Rychta sends a telegram to his relatives that the wedding is off. Susan reads the telegram on its way and gets very unhappy. As she isn’t aware of the former fiancée, she understand it that Mr. Rychta has decided to not to marry her.Read More »

Professor Karas is widely known as enthusiastic propagator of the motto “Morality Above All Else”. He guides his students as well as his own family to live a morally decent life. One day he has an unexpected visitation. It’s his illegitimate daughter Vera, who is proof of his thoughtlessness of youth. Mr. Karas know that she can ruin his image of morality propagator, thus he decides to keep her in secret and asks her to leave. Instead of leaving she takes a position of a governess in his own family without letting him know. Mr. Karas realizes that he must reveal the truth sooner or later, but he doesn’t have enough courage to do so. As he still postpones it, he is more and more scared to come to his own home. Situation gets even more complicated, as Vera turns all the orderliness in the family upside down. All the confusion culminates when everybody find out that Mr. Karas secretly meets Vera.Read More »

Quote:
The story of a boy and his dog is a classic motif of children’s films. However, Franstišek Vláčil transformed this well-established convention into something sadly poetic, perfectly befitting the tenor of his time. As was the case with many artists, the post-Soviet Invasion years were not kind to Vláčil’s career, but by the mid 1970’s he was eventually allowed to take the reins of a smattering of short documentaries and films for young audiences. Though ostensibly one such children’s film, the adult world tragically intrudes in Sirius, Vláčil’s elegiac WWII-era coming of age film, which screens this Saturday afternoon as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Fantastic World of Franstišek Vláčil retrospective now underway at the Walter Reade Theater.Read More »

Synopsis:
The Thirty Years’ War is seen from the point of view in this satirical slapstick comedy that combines engravings, old cartoons, montages, special effects, and film. The positions of both sides of the religious war are fair game for biting satirical jabs. Petr (Kostka) plays a peasant who is pressed to join one side before being captured by the enemy and mistaken for a Duke. Matej (Miloslav Holub) can change sides quickly with his reversible cloak. Lenka (Emilia Vasaryova) disguises herself as a jester to avoid the conflict and gives her comments about the pompous futility on both sides of the conflict.Read More »

Vlacils tribute to winter Prague.Read More »

Quote:
Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father’s properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.Read More »

Quote:
F. A. Brabec’s Král Ubu is a film for wide audiences made for the centennial of the first performance of French playwright Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896). It is a cruel picture of the ways in which human beings acquire power and then cling to it. The story of Father Ubu, an idiot who climbs over the bodies of the dead to his royal post, is presented with a touch of the grotesque where naive comic elements meet black humor. Using a human touch, the film- makers were able to transform the original into a film aimed at a contemporary audience while remaining faithful to the vision of Father Ubu and Mother Ubu venturing everything in their efforts to seize power and mammon. Read More »