Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

A nuclear reactor and a factory canteen, the jargon of engineers, and the earthy language of cooks. In her film-survey, the sensitive observer Vihanová observes two contrasting worlds that meet at the Dukovany nuclear power plant during a hydrostatic test on Unit II of the EDU. Science and life are permeated by Badinerie, from Bach’s Orchestral Suite in B minor. Art gives both worlds greatness.

An everyday black cat defies the laws of physics.

A disturbing story set in the near future. People are holed up in their small dwellings and live in a virtual world. Everyone films and streams various videos. They don’t have a clue that they’re not free until one of them goes outside. But the discovery of the outer reality is something their virtual masters aren’t happy to see.

Young but already experienced filmmaker Robert Sedláček (author of the documentary trilogy about modern Czech history Tenkrát or the feature debut Pravidla lži), meets in the film the retired prime minister Miloš Zeman, who, with his own ambivalent attitude, sees this film as his "obituary". In the documentary, he talks about the personal and socio-political contexts of his life and confesses in it his admiring relationship with Vysočina, which is for him an "anchor in his soul". The viewer learns what the former prime minister thinks about and how he reflects on the recent past, and in this way he can actually learn something about himself, because Miloš Zeman is one of the most powerful men in our modern history and therefore also, in a certain sense, the embodiment of Czech society.

The unmistakable voice of the eleven-time Anděl Award winner, first-class musicians, and songs that flow across musical genres in a concert experience from Brno's Sono Music Club... The concert, recorded on November 28, 2022, at the SONO Music Club in Brno, is the culmination of Dan Bárta & Illustratosphere's concert tour for their joint fifth studio album, Kráska a zvířený prach (Beauty and Stirred Dust). This mutually inspiring and authentically creative community of musicians included not only new songs in the program, but also a selection of some older atmospheric hits from their more than twenty-year musical career. Enjoy Bárta's refined vocal performance and a fusion of virtuosically played original compositions on the domestic scene, combining pop rock, jazz, soul, and funk with intimate poetry in the lyrics, just like hundreds of fans in one of the most acoustically perfect halls in the country.

Tobiáš is a drummer for Ivan Král. He is also a professional garbage collector. He lives among garbage cans and a landfill. There he literally finds Pavla—a fragile, golden-haired creature with slashed wrists, unconscious. The love between Tobiáš and Pavla is strong, elemental—chaos. Pavla collapses in a nightclub. During a song, she is carried out on a stretcher. The head doctor at the hospital tells Tobiáš about Pavla's incurable illness and her impending death. Tobiáš raises money to save her life through charity concerts. After futile efforts, an opportunity for fraud arises. Even that doesn't help them. Yet in this situation, they find something much more important...

A concert performance of the most famous parts of Dvořák's opera Rusalka in the park of Liteň Castle, directed by the Caban brothers with multimedia elements and original choreography... The year 2021 marks an important milestone in the history of Dvořák's opera Rusalka, which premiered in 1901, 120 years ago. At the same time, the non-profit organization Liteň Castle and the Jarmila Novotná Festival are celebrating ten years of activity. Its mission is to popularize the name of the legendary diva, actress, patriot, and important personality Jarmila Novotná and to care for the cultural monuments on the grounds of Liteň Castle—and on the occasion of both anniversaries, it did so with an extraordinary performance of the opera Rusalka in the picturesque surroundings and magical summer atmosphere of Liteň Castle.

Filmed on location in Vignaccio, Grosseto, Italy.

A festive event marking the 10th anniversary of the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union, during which the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra will perform a live broadcast of L. van Beethoven's popular Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, with Ode to Joy.

A little girl with a vivid imagination is taken to a gallery where she fantasizes stories around famous paintings.

Lightbulbs are throwing a party for growing up flames to welcome them in the system that will let them shine and protect them. But one flames likes to play with fire and rebels against the system.

Lenka Dusilová is an extraordinary figure in the Czech music scene: an original composer, multi-instrumentalist, and unmistakable voice with over two decades of a distinguished solo career. Emerging as a wild rocker in early ’90s bands (Sluníčko, Lucie, Pusa), she gained widespread acclaim with her debut solo album “Lenka Dusilová” (2000), earning the first of many Singer of the Year awards. Brave and unpaved, she then charted her own path as an interpreter of her own songs, releasing solo albums such as “Spatřit světlo světa” (2002) and “Mezi světy” (2005). Over the years, Dusilová delved ever deeper into a unique personal expression, blending influences from diverse styles and life experiences on albums like “Eternal Seekers” (2008), “Baromantika” (2011), and “V hodině smrti” (2014).

Jakub's Piano Library concerts attract a remarkable crowd. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, Jakub is forced to close his piano shop and cancel the evening performances. So he decides to invite selected pianists to a church hidden in the alleys of Prague's Old Town. There, in St. Anne's Church, an international spiritual center with the mysterious name Prague Crossroads, a magnificent concert piano is temporarily housed. The pianists play here alone, concentrating intently. How strong is our faith in ourselves, and can art help us? The audience itself is unsettled when confronted with beauty and futility.

A documentary about 60 years of hockey in Brno.

Memories of three adults on their children's convalescent stays in Spa Kynžvart. "The nurses forbade us to go to the corridor where the toilets were after curfew, so we had to pee behind the wardrobe."

A purely Czech version of a road movie story. The main character, a young lawyer named Běloušek, has a seemingly trivial task: to bring a slightly bohemian vagrant from Prague to Olomouc for trial. Everything should be easy and simple, but the owner of the law firm and father of the main character has a special personal interest in this task, so from the outset, the journey is influenced by Murphy's first law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong..." There's nothing unusual about that, but it's hard to explain to his father and fiancée. Instead of three hours in the car, Mr. Běloušek ends up spending several days on the road with the eccentric Pete. This unwanted trip then changes many things in his view of the world.

Artistic endeavour isn’t about competing; even so, applicants still have to be placed in order of merit at the academy’s entrance exams. But how do you assess artistic talent? And what role can art play in today’s world? A layered, observational documentary which presents a portrait of an institution and a light generational statement in one.

Unusual comedy about women and their marriage troubles.

This short observational film by the Averklub Collective follows everyday life of Romani inhabitants of the poverty-stricken Slovak settlement of Rudňany. The images of their lives are accompanied by the readings from a text by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, especially his 1845 description of the poor conditions of Irish workers in England by using the term social murder. Combining these two components, it arrives at a highly up-to-date study of poverty, which is often accompanied by racism and stigmatization. – Ji.hlava IDFF 2021

One morning, a magical rock appears in the backyard of a kindergarten. As soon as the children find it, a magical adventure starts, which can soften even a greedy professor.

A special concert by Michal Hrůza to celebrate 20 years on the Czech music scene. The stage was graced by 51 members of the Bon Art Pops Orchestra, 50 children from Coro Piccolo, Michal Hrůza with Kapela Hrůzy, and guest performers Lenka Dusilová, Klára Vytisková, and Olga Königová, who sang duets with Hrůza and the musicians.

Everything that seems and doesn't seem to be there is from reality. Filmed, tilted, sketched, visited in reality. Isn't it awfully beautiful? It's a teleport to a magical world that exists somewhere!

Sound-generated animation gives the audible world an impressive form of moving geometric shapes or a starry sky.

A short animated film dedicated to the boundlessness of children's imagination. What can a child think when he hears a neighbor drilling a wall? What wonderful pictures his imagination can draw.

An allegorical film about relationships between people, about the boundaries they set for themselves, the ones they fight over, and the ties that may or may not form between them.

The feature film by visual artist Tomáš Svoboda is not about film. It is not an essayistic reflection on the moving image. It is not a comical story from a summer afternoon. It cannot be perceived as a record of a work process. It is not even a retold film. And it is certainly not about the technology of filmmaking. It is about life.

In the second half of the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham designed the model of a panopticon, a type of building that made supervision most effective. Panopticons were firstly used for prisons, places where supervision and punishment are the main functions. Secret services but also different surveillance technologies are the new panopticons. They can monitor, save and store data about people to identify them, to distinguish the location and time of people’s behaviour and actions. Architecture theorist, software expert, people who are or were monitored, or the former secret service agents explain their panoptical experience. Reading again Michel Foucault´s Discipline and Punish, through experience with different kinds of supervision, in the film we are looking for the perfect application of the panoptical principle.

Follows the footsteps of former Czechoslovak – Vietnamese cooperation and seeks to sum up its importance, regardless of its close political aspects, for lives of few particular Vietnamese citizens and also to report on contemporary Vietnam through experience of local people, who surprisingly aren’t separated from Czech by language barrier.