Return to Paradise Lost

The title "All My Good Countrymen" is not without irony as this epic tale of Czech village life from shortly after the end of the Second World War concentrates on the activities of a group of friends who are not beyond reproach in siding with a politically corrupt regime for material advancement. Are these the "good countrymen" of the title or does it refer to the rest of the village who scorn these petty authority figure with silent contempt?

Based on the best-selling novel by Nobel-laureate Heinrich Böll, this drama is a passionate indictment of Catholicism. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) has earned his living as a clown, though he is in fact a very covert sort of social critic. After enduring a difficult childhood in Bonn during the Second World War, including his mother's fanatic Nazism, he is appalled to discover many of the people he knows and loves swept deeply into involvement in the Catholic Church.

A schizophrenic patient is is wasting away in a mental institution, until a young doctor encourages him to write poetry. The resulting masterpieces are however not able to stop the man from suicide.

The first part of the block will be dedicated to the monograph Vojtěch Jasný: The Film Poet in Exile (2020) authored by the film historian Jiří Voráč. The monograph is centered on the legendary director’s life and career after his emigration to Western Europe and to the US after 1968, which have so far received little attention. In exile, Jasný established himself as a film director (he authored over thirty cinema and TV films and documentaries), stage director, photographer, and film studies lecturer. The first part will be followed by the screening of Jasný’s documentary Why Havel? co-produced by himself and Miloš Forman in Canada and Czechoslovakia in 1991. As remarkable as this reflection of the paradoxical transformation of a dissident into a president in the carnival-like atmosphere of the euphoric post-revolution period with the first question marks already appearing may be, it did not meet the expectations of the head of state.

A quiet, unassuming man sentenced to a long term in a maximum-security prison uses his time to study and begins to write cryptic short stories.

Based on the novel by Vojtěch Jasný

Some people with a strange cat arrive in a small village. The cat wears glasses, and when someone takes them off, she can color people, according to their nature and mood. The grown-ups of the village consider the cat to be dangerous, but the kids just love her…