Discoveries from Czechoslovakia World Cinema

Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.

An ambitious girl is hired by a group of thieves as a maid in the apartment of a famous actress. The thieves thus prepare the ground for a sophisticated robbery of rare furs and jewels. The girl is tyrannized by the actress and gradually looks behind the scenes of her marriage. After Blanche is murdered, Julie decides to get everything - jewels, furs and property...

In the Prague Old Town and the adjoining streets there is always plenty of life. Housewives shop, beggars arouse sympathy, the Salvation Army tries to put the godless on the road to salvation by hymns and sermons, and Ferdys Pistora hunts in the pockets of his fellow men and isn't even put off by the presence of an officer of the law. Ferdys sets off to burgle villa of the banker Rosenstok, but a fire breaks out in the house and Ferdys ends up saving the banker's two small children. For this he is celebrated as a hero and gets a place as an errand boy with the Rosenstoks. At home he is visited by representatives of the Salvation Army, Captain Kosterka and Terezka, with whom Ferdys instantly falls in love.

War tests human character severely, because the slightest suspicion of failure is hard to live with. A resistance worker who finds himself in such a situation would rather sacrifice his own life in order to dispel once and for all the doubts of those around him. Thus an agitprop was created about the moral maturity of those who consciously and from the right class positions fought against Nazism.

The film captures the new events in the lives of the main characters of the film "The Copper Tower". After two years spent in prison because of smuggling they return to the Stratená dolina valley and plan a revenge on police lieutenant Pardek.

"Román s basou" is another short by master a stop-motion puppet-animator Jiri Trnka. The story is based on Anton Chekhovs story "Roman s Kontrabasom". Princess Bibulova decides to go fishing along the river while not far away a bass player leaves his two companions to go for a swim.

Jitka, a librarian, is tasked with replacing an injured seventh-grade teacher at an elementary school. Despite her husband's resistance, she faces marital tensions, a dysfunctional classroom, and disgruntled parents. When a minor dereliction of duty leads to tragedy, she seeks help.

Story about the people around the circus and the unfortunate love of a young man an acrobat. Before the dispute escalates so much that, according to the old clown, Vincek ends up with a noose on his back and Lotyš in a bass, fate intervenes and the young acrobat is called up to the war, where he serves with the dragoons. After serving his time and being released into civilian life, he sets out to find the National with his beloved Nina. However, she has not been with the circus for almost a whole year. Her parents took her away and Vincek, to the chagrin of his friends and the principal, decides to go looking for her. After a long journey, he finds his beloved in the Russian Kuznecki circus, but she has changed a lot during the years of separation. A simple girl in love has turned into a calculating, ambitious woman who desires money above all. But Vincek doesn't have you.

The series of children's films about Detective Martin, who intervenes in cases involving children, begins with this film. It consists of two short stories: in the first ("Three Bottles"), the young hero, escaping from an orphanage, gets involved in a robbery of postage stamps..., in the second ("Flying Carousel"), the children fight a dishonest owner of fairground rides...

A simple print worker selflessly cares for his sick mother. He spends all his free time with her and the only hobby he indulges in from time to time is model railways. But the arrival of a beautiful girl changes everything. The hero suddenly falls into a love infatuation, not knowing how to cope with the conflict of his unrecognised feelings and his concern for his mother...

Story of an extraordinary musician, violinist, who was famous, but his alcoholism led him to poverty. Now he is playing time from time to rich people. Then Albert meets count Delesov, who tries to change Albert's life. Two different characters, two ways of life confront... Will Albert change? Should he?

Carefree young nurse Marta learns upon her husband's death that he was involved in all manner of criminal activity, which puts her life in danger.

Juraj, a Slovak artist living in Prague, takes stock in his life, realizing that his days pass without purpose. He lives a carefree life. But now he has to choose between two women, between the city and the country, and between creative work and craftsmanship. He has a passion for art but he also has to make a living. Through his relationships with close people, he grows aware of his position and this knowledge helps him to live a more fulfilling and better life.

Second half of the 19th century. In a small town in South Bohemia, fifth-former Jan Ratkin is living through the confusions of first love together with his classmates.

The waitress Gita from the hotel "Bobí vrch" approaches her lover who has not left his wife yet and gives him an ultimatum: if he does not do all according to her wish, she will announce to the police his machinations with foreign currency.

A classical ballad motif about an aging father and his three daughters is quite unusually here set against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia of the 1950s. After having been expropriated, the former landowner Majda seeks refuge with his three daughters whom he had sent to a convent a long time ago. But only the youngest one is able to forgive him and she is willing to take care of him despite the threat of expulsion from the order.

A story about young girl Hanka who doesn't have parents and is forced to spend most of her time in a hospital bed.

Spy film about a man with a face lift who gets recruited by western organisations.

After a soldier cuts off the arm of king's cousin, king decides to deactivate the army. Of course, generals don't like it at all and they try to kill the king. The assassin should be artificial body in the shape of actress Evelina Keleti and with brain of psychotic serial killer Fany Stubová. They also manage to kill king's astrologer Stuart Hampl, who warns the king. Accidentally, Hampl's brain is implanted into assassin's body, actress Keleti is killed and chaos begins.

A police inspector and inexperienced trainee search for a mysteriously disappeared manufacturer of ointments for hair growth.

A tragicomic story from a tragicomic time - this is how one could characterize Jiří Hubac's play, which premiered in May 1991. The drama of two friends who fought in England as Czech airmen during the war and had to live through the well-known martyrdom after returning home is a story about the power of friendship, the courage to transcend oneself in the face of violence and the right to preserve human memory. The television film by director Jaroslav Dudek, who cast Jiří Bartoska and Josef Dvořák in the lead roles, was honoured with the prestigious Prix Europe international award in Reykjavik.

The adventure fairy-tale about the brave prince and his faithful butler Jan wandering together.

An attempted theft of a rare antique is uncovered at a castle that houses an apprentice recreation center. The apprentices help uncover the real perpetrators and their accomplices.

At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the idea of making an abridged version of the footage for cinema, he had to not only rebuild the storyline but also dub it into Czech. However, the result was only an illustrative puzzle, describing the various stages of the hero's turbulent life.

A dramatic story about two friends - fisherman Richardus and municipal executioner Emil Targo takes place at the river Danube, in places that used to be targets of Ottoman raids. But their attraction to the same woman and Emil’s betrayal change their indissoluble friendship to an equally strong hatred. And as it usually goes - after twenty years by a trick of fate Richardus’ daughter Agajka becomes the wife ofthe sun of his sworn enemy.

Miroslav Hornicek is a deluded young man who is convinced he is Faust incarnate. This turn of mind leads to some ludicrous situations, such as when he believes a woman is really a cat. Before he can be rounded up and interned wherever they keep people with this type of a problem, love enters his life and the clouds that obscured his vision begin to dissipate.

A young, unmarried woman finds herself a "little bit pregnant" and she tries to hide this fact from her mother but it isn't long before the truth is obvious.

“A bored housewife, a husband who married her for show, and a stupid boy who is full of himself because he is dating a Swiss woman.” The words of Inspector Tůma sound like they’re from a European melodrama, but in fact they come from a Czechoslovak crime story. A pair of detectives, counterfeit medicine, the high-society setting of a Karlovy Vary hotel, and Oldřich Nový as the aging hotel manager Kraus.

A king was dying. An old man told his sons that only the water of life would save him.

This film is a psychological study of a woman who chooses solitude as an escape from the duplicity and emotional barrenness of the men around her.

In 1647, the impoverished noble Václav Rynda shelters an imperial commissioner-only to learn the visitors are French agents plotting a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburgs.

An image and music collage - a cinema concert - guided by a young sound engineer David, for whom the exhibition on E. F. Burian is an incentive to take more interest in this avant-garde artist. The film interweaves two strands - documentary and factual, drawing on contemporary material and archival images - and fictional with the story of David the sound engineer.

Barnabáš Kos, a meek and modest triangle-player in a state orchestra finds himself unfathomably promoted to musical director. Now drunk with power, the once timid musician turns into a poised, commanding peacock and seeks to transform the orchestra to suit his own agenda and inflated vision.

Wartime events from a child's perspective were a popular theme during the previous regime - here it is a twelve-year-old village boy who experiences dangerous situations with retreating Nazi troops in picturesque South Bohemia... Any attempt to achieve a more believable depiction is destroyed by the staging's grandeur, and in the end the result is an awkward piece, suitable at most for celebrating the relevant national holidays. A longer copy with a tragic ending is stored in the NFA. Milda is shot unnoticed by an SS major.

This comedy is about one average family. The father works as master in the factory and his son is studying on high school. One day father must start to visit the evening school. It's the same school as his son visiting. The lives both students are connecting together. The son must teach the math and physics his own father. The father getting to know, that the life of the students is not simple as he supposed.

Even under socialism, which proclaimed the equality of all people, there were status differences. A young bricklayer, who has fallen in love with a college girl from a "better" family, feels this first-hand - the girl's petty bourgeois parents are fundamentally opposed to an unequal relationship from their point of view. In protest, the young lovers decide to live in a tent for the time being and go straight to the park. The surprisingly clueless director Ladislav Rychman has tried to merge disco songs with a tame satire on modern-day rich people.

The story of a childhood dream come true. Schoolchildren discover an abandoned poultry farm with an artificial hatchery and agree to raise their own chicks. They devote all their energies to it and wait anxiously for the little chicks to come into the world. Before that happens, they face many obstacles...

The nine-year-old Prague boy Pepiček flies to Moscow as an involuntary stowaway on an airplane. Together with the Soviet pioneer Mischa, he pursues an alleged agent in the hustle and bustle of the World Festival and is flown back to Prague in the evening.

A story about a young medical school student and his adventures.

One of the moralities of the trio of authors Milos Macourek, Adolf Born and Jaroslav Doubrava. It deals with the topic of implacability of human optimism and fantasy. In a sad manner it tells us a humorous story of a man living double life: one of a beaten little clerk, humiliated by his arrogant boss, imperious wife and misbehaved descendant; the other of a spoiled hero of a dream empire full of beautiful and tender women, flowers and fantastic figures. From artistic point of view is the film based on Adolf Born's lithographs.

Shortish forty-year old Ludvík Podzimek, lute and flute player in a Prague orchestra, is far from being an attractive man. He is nevertheless generally considered a great 'Don Juan'. Women take up with him out of a certain motherly compassion and Ludvík's tender heart does not allow him to split with any of them. His lovers thus accumulate and cause him numerous troubles.

A biographical film about a Czech mechanic and designer who was the first in the Czech lands to construct a steam car.

A group of temporary workers arrive at the Czech-German border to conduct geological exploration. However, not all people have pure intentions and a past, and so the group of geologists is threatened by saboteurs who want to blow up an abandoned mine and escape across the border...

A scientist meets a nice girl and they start dating. He decides the only way to find out for sure if she’s the one is to take a long trip with her, but things don’t go quite as he’d hoped.

The film is about an unhappy mother who left her husband and a young son. She works as a singer and the boy is in the oven at the house on the wreath. The housekeeper beats the son and he runs away.

The story takes place in a retirement home and creates a mosaic of the lives of old people who are trying to find a relationship with themselves and with life in these specific conditions. Each of its residents has a distinctive approach to life and its basic values. The most interesting features of the title, which is marked by a visibly cold production approach, are the worthy performances of the actors of the older generation. Some of them appeared in front of the camera after many years and unfortunately for the last time.

The leader of the emerging organized labor movement in the 1880s, Ladislav Zápotocký-Budečský, is exiled to his native village, where he works as a tailor and continues to raise social awareness among members of the working class.

Hubert Hrabe, known as Smart Boy, is a Prague dandy who is always skirting the edge of the law. Like every likable rogue, he has a worthy adversary - Police Inspector Mourek, who has long been trying in vain to put him behind bars. However, this defender of justice, who is constantly trying to outsmart his "own" criminal, ends up becoming the victim of his own zeal while hunting forgers that are as good as any in Europe, as Hubert the Smart Boy, sets a trap for Mourek

Radek Simek, the driver of a postal car, is shot dead on his regular route. The Investigators give up initial suspicions of robbery, because he carried no greater amount of money. Even questioning Honza Marek, another mail car driver, brings no result. When the circumstances are becoming more and more suspicious. Marek decides to track down the killer on his own.

Honza is looking forward to taking a vacation, but the disappearance of three spoiled princesses spoils his plans. He is helped in his rescue not only by the kind fairy-tale grandmother, who is responsible for their "curse", but also by three scoundrels who deceive him, leave him in a cave and pretend to be the princesses' saviors. Of course, everything turns out well in the end, the truth comes out... but instead of marrying one of the princesses, Honza devises a "re-education" for them...

Seventh form pupils at a grammar school in Přívlaky are preparing for a secondary school sports competition. Class creep Krhounek gives the class teacher Lejsal a copy of the seventh form’s magazine Roar. Most of the teachers insist on severe punishing the culprit. The author does not own up and consequently the whole class is punished by being banned from taking part in the schools competition. The most gifted pupil, Benetka, rather sharply criticises the school in a homework essay on a subject of his choice. The strict Czech language teacher is convinced Benetka is the author of the school magazine. Benetka denies the charge but his expulsion from school is proposed anyway on account the views he expounded in his essay. Eventually, Boukal, the author of the school magazine comes forward and admits to writing it. The pupils are allowed to take part in the contest and thanks to Benetka they win. In the meantime however the teachers vote to expell him.