Discoveries from Czechoslovakia World Cinema

A biographical story about significant Czech dramatist, writer and actor Josef Kajetán Tyl.

Forty-year-old bachelor Vondráček lives with his mother, who is completely subservient to him and unable to confide in him about her late love. She is convinced that her son cannot do without her care and help. It is true, Vondráček has become too accustomed to the comforts of home. The selfish young man is complicated by an advertisement. He is not attracted by the acquaintance, but by the cottage. He likes Zuzanka, who comes to introduce herself, but even more so by the idea of ​​enjoying further comforts in the countryside...

The story is a celebration of the cleverness and wit of the simple peasant Čupera, who triumphs not only over the demon of alcohol, but also over the bureaucratically persistent and thorough devil. The hell that the farmer goes through during the withdrawal process is stylized as a shantytown, a galley with a prison and a dehumanized night club.

An old bachelor in a studio apartment wakes up from his chair. The TV is on, but only static is visible. While switching channels, where nothing is being broadcast, he finds a station where a man is reading from a book. What starts as innocent reading to help him sleep peacefully turns into a nightmare.

An experimental study in black and white tracing the stages of human life through the transformation of a man’s face.

An industrial short produced by Pražská železářská společnost (Prague Ironworks Company) in 1939, the film contains footage from the shorts Výroba oceli (Steel Production, 1939)—today presumed lost—and Poklady země (Treasures of the Earth, 1939), both directed by Karel Kohout.

In the second half of the eighties, this film was shown in cinemas as a full-length series of well-known fairy tales with popular characters: Puppy, Mike the cat, Křemílek and Vochomůrka, Dorotka, Kreček and Brundibári.

A king and his three daughters must contend with the hairy wiles of the "ugly bastard" known as Omnifurous.

Welcome to real life, little mole! Incited by a television report, the comfortable coexistence of the gardener and the builder of mounds is threatened, and not just that, so is the mole’s cosy home underground. Rarely did the colourful Czech animation series for children show such a serious and brutal fight for existence.

This film presents the history of handball and acquaints viewers with this sport using a story from the life of children. It provides information on Czech successes in handball and presents this sport as being suitable for any playing field, even a small one.

The second part of the film begins with a journey in the equatorial region, where the travelers managed to capture the most typical images of the original Africa. The journey continues to the forests of the Belgian Congo, where they filmed the smallest people in the world, black dwarfs. From Central Africa, they head south through Victoria Falls and the mysterious ruins of a medieval settlement in Zimbabwe. In Johannesburg, they witness a celebration of black gold diggers. Their journey ends at the southernmost tip of Africa under Table Mountain in Cape Town. The end of the film depicts the birth of a volcano shot from close range.

The film is about a slightly crazy botany professor Ducánek, who is so busy with his scientific experiments that he has completely forgotten that he is married. Neither his housekeeper Veronika nor his friend Potužník knew about the existence of his capricious wife, the operetta diva Lucy. However, when his wife returns home after seven years in remorse, Ducánek takes a complicated action to elegantly get rid of his wife...

A young boy’s infatuation with flight is the subject of Vláčil’s poetic, prize-winning early short, made for the Czechoslovak Army’s film unit.

About meteorologists working on Lomničký štít. The film shows contrast between a man and mountains.