Czech

The screenplay (Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder inspired a theatre production by Dusan David Parízek. The screenplay and the production in turn inspired the film ODPAD MESTO SMRT (Waste, City, and Death) by Jan Hrebejk. Romi (Gabriela Mícová), a prostitute, is anything but successful at her job: she is of far too gentle a nature for her clients. The more obstinately she is pushed to the streets by her pimp Franz (Stanislav Majer), the closer she is to a complete breakdown. One day Romi is addressed by a property speculator referring to himself as a “wealthy Jew” (Martin Finger). He does not demand any sexual services of her. Read More »

Vlasta and Tonda don’t have much longer to live but they do have one more important task ahead of them – to find and kill the communist prosecutor who sent them to prison in the 1950s. An unusual road movie about two former political prisoners who fight for justice despite every obstacle.Read More »

Sin of God was made as a studio exercise by the world-famous Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland (born 1948) during her studies at FAMU in Prague. The plot is based on Isaac Babel’s short story The Sin of Jesus. – A young maid Arina (Jaroslava Pokorná) has a love affair with a peddler Serega. She is even pregnant with him for the second time. She doesn’t take care of the twins from her first pregnancy, she gave them to a foundling. Her lover, however, has to enlist. The inexperienced mother does not know how to fulfil her sexual and emotional desires during Serega’s absence. So she consults God. He sends her an angel, Alfred, with whom she cannot conceive. But this is not the end of the woman’s troubles, rather the beginning.Read More »

An artist takes inspiration from the rain outside.Read More »

THE GOLDEN FERN (ZLATÉ KAPRADÍ) – 1963, NFA, 115 min. Czech director Jiří Weiss’s breathtaking B&W fairy tale is one of the most unjustly neglected treasures of 1960s fantasy filmmaking, a hauntingly lyrical work with overtones of Wojciech Has’s THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT, František Vláčil’s MARKETA LAZAROVÁ and Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. A handsome young shepherd (Jean Marais lookalike Vít Olmer) stumbles across a magical golden fern in the forest. A stunning, enigmatic forest fairy named Lesanka (Karla Chadimová) is sent to retrieve it but instead falls hopelessly in love with him. When he’s forced to join the army and heads off to war, she sews a seed from the fern into his shirt to protect him.Read More »

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This is unimaginable today, but on Saturday 16 January 1982, BBC2 showed an ultra-obscure subtitled Czech film in an early enough slot (9.35pm) to garner a decent-sized audience – “decent-sized” equating to “many times larger than BBC4’s wildest dreams”, given that Britain had only three television channels at the time (for the record, it was up against Match of the Day on BBC1, and the small-screen premiere of Capricorn One on ITV, a somewhat sci-fi heavy night). Read More »

JIRI TRNKA’S 1950 puppet animation film PRINCE BAJAJA
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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 »