Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

Voices of the Dead.

A puppet love story full of the funny situations that can occur during the co-existence of a man and his unusual female life-partner. You can expect humour, romance and at times even thrill.

A young man, Petr, volunteers for a radical self-imposed experiment of total isolation in a single room, seeking inner peace but confronting his own limits. When a woman who has silently watched his experiment’s progress enters and tries to persuade him to abandon the test, Petr’s carefully constructed plans and fragile mental equilibrium are challenged.

Alone and helpless, even without hearing, one can still live. What if a person is born and life is not the happiest for them? Being born without hearing may seem like an unimaginable situation to many of us, but everyone learns to live with it. Like our main character, who was not blessed with hearing. Together with the man who cares for him and acts as his mentor, they live far from the city, leading a traditional life that many people would probably find difficult to identify with. The boy, who has never been part of social contact, finds himself in a difficult situation where he will have to try to integrate, and even though it will be difficult, he will try. Will he succeed, or will he be destroyed by a society that still does not understand him?

An ambivalent snapshot of transformative, dream-like moods with a classic storyline, the jester longs for the King's mistress and decides to win her by force.

Audiovisual poem based on a true story of a woman, who forgot to live her life.

The short documentary gives a glimpse into the life of one of the last very isolated and archaic settlements in the Romanian mountains. It is a portrait of a place where life has a different meaning and time has another pace. In a world that is more and more driven by fast gains by any means, the Hill and its people appear to be one of the last enclaves hidden from time, where man has still a deep connection to nature, his land and animals. Life is simple and rough, the land is imposing its own rules, but people preserve a sense of freedom and serenity almost forgotten by the modern man.

In the heart of the Sudetes forest in the Czech Republic, the vestiges of a troubled past are still visible. Walking through these ruins, a young woman wonders about this past and our duty to remember.

The experimental animated film, El Canto de las Moscas, translates the desolation caused by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict through the poetic voice of Maria Mercedes Carranza (1945-2003) and the audiovisual dialogue between 9 Colombian women. In 24 places that are visited during the course of a day, a map of terror is drawn where massacres took place in Colombia in the 1990s. Archival images, the artists’ personal memories and the use of loops and analog materials bring to life the landscapes ravaged by violence and build a polyphony of memory and mourning, a universal song of pain.

A surreal short film about the desire for deliverance and about searching for fragments of a soul that divided itself into different forms and shapes.

In 2003, an international peace conference was held in Ramallah in the West Bank, and Tamara Moyzes, who was studying abroad in Israel at the time, decided to cross the border and attend the conference. She even managed to sneak into a press conference with Yasser Arafat and make a video recording of it, which she then intercut with footage of her difficult journey across the border.

Bielický realized the virtual tele-performance Exodus during his time at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His journey through the Israeli desert took place simultaneously in the physical and the virtual space using the then pioneering technologies of GPS and satellite internet.

For her thesis project, Eva Jiřička decided to plant flowers in the abandoned flowerbed on the sidewalk in front of the Academy of Fine Arts. She later invited the evaluation committee outside and asked them to board a rented bus. The bus then made a full three-hundred-sixty-degree turn on top of the flower bed, involving all of the participants in its destruction. The graduating artist thus confronted herself, the thesis committee, and the head of the studio, Michael Bielický, with the question of the relationship between the students and the institution.

We all need juggling. Training attention, increasing speed, improving physical condition, connecting brain hemispheres. Enjoying community. At any age. Senior Circus!

A film portrait about a young plumber who defies the ideas of his whole family about his future. The skeleton of the story becomes an Excel spreadsheet full of mundane tasks, according to which Tomáš, after his burnout in his adult and working life, guides himself every day.

An exercise in the camera department about a man who claims that one must not believe his story, but stories are actually the only thing he likes in the world. About a man who is afraid of people, but loves their essence. A man who was told as a child that if he could find something he felt passionate about, he would always be fine, so he found drugs. Especially a man who gave up drugs to tell stories.

Residents of the South Bohemian town of Paštiky wonder if a thief can have a conscience. A few days after granite skulls were stolen from the cemetery gate, someone returned them, placing them carefully back in front of the church wall. The mysterious return of the stolen sculptures leads locals to wonder about the perpetrator's motives. The film is a varied mosaic of testimonies and witness statements into which they project their own ideas.

A report on carousel operators, what their profession means, and if it has a future at all. Big business, but also small genuine smiles. What's the most important part of all this?

An audiovisual essay using a digitized, 8mm format that addresses questions of what the essence of contemporary art is and who it's made for. The film, which is divided into nine chapters, is based on practical experience and the works that are on display in the Gandy Gallery in Bratislava. It examines the relationship between the artwork as a whole and its features, signatures, and also institutional background.

This combined film melds together not only different techniques but also different thematic topics. The titular mythical figure is just one of the actors in this dreamworld speaking to a contemporary audience in codes of media and narratives that are dear to it. Like a vision or nightmare trapped in the loop of a computer prism.

A visual essay accompanied by ambient electronica presents a virtual environment that only seemingly resembles our everyday world. 3D digital objects composed of both technological and organic structures create a dystopic unfamiliar landscape from which all human traces have disappeared a long time ago.

Sixty-five years later, five Holocaust survivors tell their amazing story, about the secret journal VEDEM created by a group of teenage boys right beneath the noses of their Nazi captors in a concentration camp. Seattle's Music of Remembrance and the Northwest Boychoir have united to give new voice, through music, to those boys' inspiring lives and words. But first the boys in the choir must come to know the 'boys of Terezin,' and learn the price of those boys' courageous resistance to their oppressors. Poignant, warm-hearted and profound, the film chronicles a unique legacy's passage to a new generation, through the power of music.

On Tuesday, March 1, dozens of artists performed on Prague’s Wenceslas Square without entry fee. The hour-and-a-half program, which will also offer viewers insight into the current situation in Ukraine and a glimpse of Ukrainians’ lives in the Czech Republic, will be hosted by the duo Světlana Witowská and Daniel Stach. Proceeds from the concert will go to the People in Need SOS Ukraine collection. The organization has provided humanitarian aid in Ukraine since 2014, and as soon as circumstances allow, its teams will focus on meeting the most basic needs - food and shelter for internally displaced persons. People in Need stands ready to assist not only in Ukraine but, if necessary, also in neighboring countries likely to be affected by the refugee wave.

The young teenager faces the question of his own identity in this horror short film that takes us from the urban landscape to the jungle of the unknown. The film employs voyeurism and poetic narrative bordering on magical realism.

This film is an imprint on the film strip, an imprint in the mind just like a memory of my father’s garden where a child is playing; an imprint of the father on the garden as a reflection of his character; an imprint of the garden on the father; an imprint of him on a person. As if the seeds were falling from his beard, skin, or hair and become the garden, roots, sprouting and growing, just like a child.

The film made by the artistic duo of Lucie Rosenfeldová and Matěj Pavlík deals with the phenomenon of phosphene - the phenomenon when variously coloured lights appear in our vision when pressure is applied to our eyes. Based on this remarkable phenomenon, often called inner sight, which has fascinated philosophers, physicians and scientists since antiquity, in their black-and-white imaginative film, the authors reveal how much human perception is influenced by social, cultural and ideological factors.

For some people, the legendary singer Jan Nedvěd represents an obsolete kitsch artist, for others a musical cult icon representing values that are rapidly disappearing. The documentary follows the daily life of a musician, advanced in his years, who embarks on (perhaps) his last tour, recalling his youth spent in the great outdoors and recounting criticism he received for performing at political demonstrations. A series of interviews with Nedvěd about his passion for music, interpersonal skills, and his twilight years supplement commentaries on loved ones, loyal fans, today's young vagabonds, and the humorous controversy of contemporary musicians stiffly parodying Nedvěd's own songs.

An animated series of Christmas fairy tales that brings together the best of Czech animation and traditional stories and traditions. The main part of the series is the fairy tale O čertovi (About the Devil), based on the book of the same name by artist Pavel Čech. Santa Claus may be a nice old man who can do many things, but Czech winter belongs to St. Nicholas, Baby Jesus, carols, Christmas decorations, and, of course, devils and chimney sweeps! The guide through the fairy tales is the devil Florimón, whose story is the biggest and most important of all and concludes the entire series.

A young woman seeking her identity explores her history and that of her ethnic group to have a better understanding of who she is.

The ideas of the first Czech president come to life in a student film by an author originally from Magnitogorsk, Russia, who, after studying animation in Yekaterinburg, went on to earn a master's degree at UTB in Zlín. Václav Havel's inspiring ideas are underscored by a clear, straightforward artistic style.

Clothes make the man, but sometimes they also reveal what kind of beast the wearer really is. In this animated film, we visit a pleasant pastry shop, which suddenly transforms from a place of comfort, sweet idleness, and chatter into an arena full of wild animals.

Composer, singer, bandleader, and music producer Karel Vágner celebrated his 75th birthday with a spectacular concert at Prague's Lucerna Hall, where he was congratulated by a whole host of his musician friends and, of course, numerous members of his family.

Television recording of the Spiritual Quintet's Christmas concert.

For many decades, the Za Luzankami stadium was a football sanctuary in Brno, Czech Republic, with a unique atmosphere and a regular fan record. Real estate and business speculation, along with political disinterest, has led to its abandonment and degradation. After more than fourteen years, during which the famous stadium was dilapidated and covered with vegetation, the frustration culminated in a unique mobilization of forces involving fans, the government and the entire city.

An experimentally tuned film that uses computer technology to create rich structures which, thanks to the chosen colors and textures, bring contrast to the background, on which a verbal message is gradually formulated in bright words.

What does it mean to be "man" or "woman"? Does this ideas refer just to a social gender role or display more difficult compound? Two beautiful spirits, who's interaction originate an infinite variety of life manifestations, an endless dance between music and silence, flame and quietness, suffering and joy, love and indifference, life and... life.

Every year, 15,000 Czech fishermen head to Norway to fulfill their desire to fish at sea. Here they experience moments of mostly male camaraderie, which, like the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, revolves around boyish talk over cans of beer and no one is immune to cabin fever. At least this is the case of six friends meeting in a restaurant in Jihlava. And when the legendary halibut start running through the fjords, the plot of this documentary tragicomedy is taken care of - the compulsive need to catch the coveted fish drives not only the six protagonists, but also the plot of the film itself.