Czech

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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 »

This is one of the earliest Jakubiskos work, student short movie.

Catechist forces his student Ratkin to confess.Read More »

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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 »

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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 »

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Czech Dream is less of a film and more of a documentary about a grand scale practical joke played on the Czech people by two student film makers. They pretend to be home-grown entrepreneurs opening a new discount hypermarket, named “Cesky Sen”, and they launch a slick advertising campaign (funded in the main by the Czech Ministry of Culture) to advertise this non-existent retail outlet. Posters, flyers, jingles and TV ads all lure several thousand people to a meadow for the opening of the hypermarket. Needless to say, some people weren’t best pleased when they found out that the front of the building was just a large billboard with nothing behind it except grass.Read More »

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A successful athlete, member of the Olympic team, after a vertebra injury and the forced end of her sports career, becomes a successful and well-known porn actress. Based on the real-life story of Olympic diving champion Andrea Absolonová.Read More »

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One of the most important images of the Czech New Wave 60s, which was ranked among the top ten domestic films of all time. Feature debut screenwriter and director Ivan Passer is currently his only feature-length film, which was shot in Czechoslovakia. In this original sad comedy in a small town after ten years encounter two classmates – musicians: one is a member of the regional symphony orchestra, the other made it to the director of local music school puts family villa, playing at funerals…Read More »

This 1966 production is the world’s first interactive film. Created by Czech filmmaker Radúz Cincera, “Kinoautomat” caused a sensation at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. It’s a black comedy in which you make decisions for the central character at key moments in the film using a wireless voting system. Groundbreaking and great fun, “Kinoautomat” has been restored by Cincera’s daughter, Alena Cincerova.Read More »