Iva Janžurová
An actor called Šnajdr is given an opportunity to make his debut as a director. He doesn’t think twice about leaving Prague and dashing off to Olomouc, where he is met by the grumpy director of the town’s cultural centre and his eccentric grandma, who is to be the star of his production and who's perfectly attuned to his sense of humour and mystification… A bittersweet comedy directed by Miroslav Krobot and starring Pavel Šimčík and Iva Janžurová.
Little Jirka is at a new school for the first time and is immediately unlucky. When his classmate Ema's backpack goes missing from the school playground, Jirka is the main suspect. He gets a magic mirror when he gives an unknown woman a snack. Jirka becomes invisible and it is up to him how he uses this ability.
The last drop for Jan's resolution is the voluntary death of his father-in-law, whose strength and patience ran dry. Grandma made decisions about Grandpa's life, old age as well as the funeral. Jan is sure that he and his wife Olga are on the same route. He recalls his past life when he used to have his own will and dreams and he wants to live again with dignity and freedom. He longs to control his own life again. And his solution is escape from the present life. In this movie we watch, in parallel ,the fates of Jan's married daughters Olinka and Alenka and his sons-in-law Erik and Pepík.
"The Magic Voice Of A Rebel" portrays the story of the Czech singer Marta Kubisová, who without never intending it, became a symbol of freedom for all generations in the newly free Czhecoslovakia in 1989. It is Marta herself who tells us her life story and how the Soviet invasion in Czechoslvakia in 1968 changed her life. Because of her deep involvement in the Prague Spring movement, she went from being the most popular singer in the country to being banned and suffering a sudden removal from the public scene by the new authorities imposed from Moscow. She refused to escape to exile and together with other banned intelectuals and artists became a disident instead. Blacklisted and persecuted by the secret police, she also suffered the betrayal of beloved people who were collaborating with the regime.
Magic and spells in the peaceful town of Jack-o'-lantern, which you will not find on any map. A funny story telling you how a magician's visit can turn his life back and how Ondra may have been fortunate enough. In the poetic fairy-tale grotesque, taking place in the non-existent town of Jack-o'-lantern, the time has stopped. The hands on the clocks show twelve minutes in twelve minutes, as if they were symbolically giving the last chance. Only the mysterious figure of Acrude knows how the story of the bluddy and the fate of his heroes will come. The well-known clairvoyant Heliodromus arrives in town. In front of school, the main hero of the story Ondra is acquainted with his daughter, Adelka...
A contemporary tragicomedy from a modern city about disintegration of relationship, disintegration of a marriage, and maybe also about the disappearance of basic rules from decent life. A very black comedy about people in their 40ies who already have money, but still listen to rock and roll, exchanging drugs for mobile phones.
Fairytale. A good king rules this land, but still things are going from bad to worse. The point is that the greedy Minister of State has an interesting pact with the devil - for bringing the kingdom into a state of dire poverty and the king to hell, he himself would sit on the throne. And he would have been well nigh successful, were it not for Princess Annie, Filip and magic Apolena - because true love cannot be quelled even by the devil's machinations.
Max and Sally, the heroes of popular Czech animated series are leaving the TV in order to become a regular boy and girl.
Alice Nellis's small-scale debut tragicomedy spotlights small-town elections. The protagonist, a university student name Jana (Theodora Remundová) who is trying to solve a troubled relationship with a married man, takes her mother's place on the election commission. In the meantime the mother (Iva Janzurová) is going through her own small domestic crisis with her husband (Leos SucharÃpa). Thanks to excellent acting performances and restrained direction, the film convincingly outlines interpersonal relations and their light social overtones.
This bittersweet film was Roman Vávra's feature debut. The film consists of three independent stories, all connected through the motif of a field of grain. In 'Awn' a young couple takes a summer stroll in the country, in 'The Haystack' a gang of boys have an adventure with an older girl, and 'The Journey' recounts the tragicomic homecoming of a pair of aging newlyweds. For only the second time in the nineties Czech star Iva Janzurová appeared on the silver screen.
The drama called I Love, You Love was made in 1980 but because of the absurd ideological ban, the film entered cinemas nine years later. Pišta is an unmarried man who works at a freight wagon which carries letters and parcels. Alcohol helps him to overcome his handicap of being short and not good-looking. He wishes he had a woman, but the woman he really wants, ageing Viera who reloads the cargoes, has a soft spot for another man. So, Pišta has nobody and nothing, except for senile mother who sometimes fails to recognize him. The film received Silver Bear for Best Director at the International Film Festival in Berlin.
Surreal short animation about a clever girl with an amazing memory. Things go well for her until she can't remember facts about polar bears for a school project.
In this kingdom there is something wrong. The Queen is plagued by hypochondria, Karolínka is a spoiled princess and her mentor is sneaky and calculating.
Hospital at the End of the City is a popular television series first released in Czechoslovakia in 1977, it featured an ensemble cast and received much viewer praise in central Europe. The series ran from 1977 to 1981 for a total of twenty episodes. The success of the series inspired the German television series The Black Forest Clinic.
The heroes of this absurd comedy, full of confusion and humor are Dzharda Zemanek and Frantisek Liska.
The director of films for kids called Bonzurka together with her loyal assistants Drahuska and Honza are looking for the actors for a new movie "The Knee". Children for this movie should not be afraid and shy and they must have talent for acting. Thus the scouting is quite difficult. The most difficult is to find an actress for a main character who lost her hair after a serious illness and now has to spent the whole holiday in the countryside with a bald head resembling a knee. Although the makeup artist does his best an artificial baldness does not solve anything. From the selected little girls only the self-assertive Rosemary has the guts to let her long hair to be cut and shave off her head.
Game Hubač George, honored at Golden Prague 1977 and the MTF Monte Carlo 1978, one of the most original works of Czech Television production. The dramatic story of a father, son and entire family addresses a serious social problem that brings with it dangers of alcoholism.
Funny family comedy based on "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain. Three friends - Tomás, Hubert and Jozka - are boys growing up in a little town. Tomás lives with his aunt Apolena and uncle Václav, who holds every job title at the little railway station, although in fact both the station and the household are run by energetic Apolena. Tomás is a boy with lots of ideas that often end up getting him into trouble not only with his teachers and aunt, but with the other inhabitants of the town as well. He has a crush on his schoolmate Blanka and for her sake he decides to try and get the prize for the best pupil in the school - an illustrated copy of Old Bohemian Legends.
To Moscow have arrived the participants of the international conference of the zoophilologists and also the international jury which is to elect for the world festival the best performance of the program of Moscow circus. Mrs Whistler (Iva Janzurová), British associate professor, makes her understood with the animals in their language but the Czech professor Ruzicka (Jirí Sovák), though he is capable of using the animals language, prefers teaching the animals the human language. Ruzicka's friend, the poodle Archibald, speaks "in Human" very well. The scientific dispute ends with a bet - if Ruzicka teaches the circus elephant to sing, Mrs Whistler will eat up her hat.
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.
The husband and wife Ludva and Hedus Homolkas with their twins Péta and Máta and Ludva's parents - the granny and grandpa - arrive in the snowy Spindleruv Mlýn for a holiday. They promise to each other that they will not spoil the quite expensive holiday by quarrels. If somebody hurts the other one he/she will kneel as a punishment.
Slacker Maurice Fadinar wasted his whole inheritance and the only way out of this situation, as it seems, to marry Helen Nonankur - daughter of a wealthy farmer. At the last meeting with his mistress in a nearby forest Fadinar's horse eats straw hat which belongs to a married lady, spending time in the company of young and hot Lieutenant Emil. Emil literally puts a knife to Maurice throat - or the lady will get back the exact same hat immediately, or he will arrange such a scandal that no wedding will not happen ...
Jealous of her vapidly "good" sister's popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara's tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
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.
Two criminal gangs are ruthlessly fighting for a 1-million dollar check that, purely by chance, got into the flat of shy high school teacher George Camel. As the number of victims sharply increases, Camel is mistakenly regarded as a mass murderer and cunningly uses his horrifying reputation to get the respect and heart of his beloved Sabrina, a journalist from a local newspaper. But this game turns out to be risky and in the end, both gangs don't hesitate to seize the check at all costs, including an improvised operation
Black comedy about a genius inventor and two young, smart and beautiful women. Both of them putting all their effort into getting the one man. This will inevitable lead to all sorts of mischief, crime and even a murder. This murder-comedy, shot at the dawn of normalization has intentionally broke off from any connection to the reality of its time. The director Zdeněk Podskalský has focused on creating intriguing story lines, revolving around the two endeavouring female characters who are fighting for the same man. Two competing parties are not only ready to kill the other, but also (if necessary) the potential groom. This film has enabled the members of the cast, composed mainly of the brightest stars of the Czech acting scene of that time, to show an incredible acting range, from the lightest comedy to the darkest cynical morbidity.
This futuristic science fiction comedy features an atomic bomb blast that causes women to grow beards and lose the ability to have children. A summit meeting is held at the United Nations, with the proposed solution of building a time machine. The decision is made to travel back in time and murder Einstein, with the hopeful result being that without the noted mathematician's research there will be no atomic bombs.
This historical film by Hynek Bočan touches upon the indecisiveness of the Czech nation, ready to bend the backbone in face of foreign rule. Situating the story at the close of the Thirty Year War enabled the depiction of the misery of the people that affects even an impoverished aristocratic milieu. Rudolf Hrušínský appears here in the role of an indecisive knight, persuaded for a long time and in vain to join the anti-Habsburg movement. The story does not only captivate through the depiction of manifold human characters, intrigues and sycophancy, but also through the circumstances ruling over the devastated farmstead, sunk in mud and crudeness. One of the best films with an updating tendency has come into being here, rightly being named along the such greats as Kladivo na čarodějnice (Witches' Hammer).
Ordinary man making his dirty actions in the small town and his coming to the right side.
Sňatky z rozumu was a Czechoslovak television programme which was first broadcast in 1968. The programme was directed by František Filip.
Comedy based on short Sean O'Casey play. John Jo Mulligan finds himself in a situation with which his pious conscience cannot cope. He has spent a night with the cunning seductress Angela. Full of remorse and dreading the ruin of his reputation, he tries to get rid of her, fearing that his pal Halibut or his landlady Miss Mossie might get to know. Angela sees her chance, turns gold-digger and does not leave before relieving John of a considerable amount of money.
Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist Ludvik Svoboda was elected. Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.
A man comes to a small village to begin his new job as an attendant at the nearby castle. But everybody in the village claims that he surely must be mistaken, there is no need for an attendant at the castle.
A comedy about two bumbling policemen investigating an alleged rape in a small Czech town. One of the alleged rapists is supposed to get married the day he's locked up.
A WW2 story of a young Austrian soldier running from the Russian army and a woman whom he forces to come along in order to save his wounded mate.
Oldrich is the runt of his village, beaten by his father, bullied by the other boys. But he has imagination of his side, and a wiry toughness they can’t defeat. The village is in turmoil, because the Nazi occupiers have just retreated and the Red Army is advancing. Oldrich dodges amid the mayhem and panic, taking his share of blows but always managing to stay one step ahead. Beautifully shot and darkly ironic, Karel Kachyna’s forgotten masterpiece jumbles reality, memory and fantasy to capture the intensity and confusion of childhood in a war zone.
