Czech Republic

Synopsis:
Emma is a lively 25-year-old shop assistant living in a small town. Tomas is a 30-year-old roofer living in a village nearby the capital. They spend a night together, with no expectations. However, it becomes the start of a relationship, love, living together. Emma decides to unburden herself and is ready to tell Tomas about her tainted background. Tomas doesn’t want to hear it as he wants to live “here and now”. A random episode unveils Emma’s past and starts off a series of incidents which turn their lives upside down.Read More »

Quote:
This winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 is a social drama directed by Karel Steklý, whose style has much in common with Italian Neorealism. The main themes of Steklý’s post-war film output were social inequality, oppression, and the exploitation of the proletariat. The film’s story, which was inspired by two chapters of Marie Majerová’s novel of the same name, follows this very thematic line. Siréna depicts industrial Kladno at the end of the 19th century when a miners’ strike over low wages was uncompromisingly suppressed by the gendarmerie. The film’s impressiveness is partly rooted in the convincing depiction of the mining milieu as well as in the sombre music of E. F. Burian. The film focuses on the Hudec family, whose young daughter Emča (Pavla Suchá) serves as a symbol for the suffering of the working class in the heroic struggle against capitalism.Read More »

Quote:
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was the first President of Czechoslovakia (1918-1935), independence movement leader and philosopher. After the Velvet Revolution, Chytilová turns to Masaryk to ensure some continuity between her country’s past and present.Read More »

Ester Krumbachová – an artist, screenwriter, director, one of the most important names of the Czech New Wave. She worked for the theatre, wrote, illustrated. She was in the middle of the artistic life in Prague in the sixties. The director Věra Chytilová asks those who knew Ester Krumbachová, cooperated with her, were her friends, loved her. She puts together a picture of an inspiring person. She starts a search which should end with the answer to the question: Who was Ester? Evening with the presence of the film authors.Read More »

As with Chytilová’s other work, the story of a young train driver was the result of compromises the director had won in defiance of Barrandov’s dramaturges. The studio had offered her the project as there was little interest in the material in view of the tough winter exterior shoot. The director rewrote Josef Šilhavý’s screenplay, turning a ‘consolidation’ story of university students finding a new meaning of life among railway workers into a bitterly amusing parable about contemporary Czechoslovakia. This meant the film’s production faced dangers not only from the unpredictable elements but also censorship and studio pressure.Read More »

Quote:
The strains of Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun” waft through this amusing comedy about an aging lecher’s ever-optimistic pursuit of the fair sex, for fair sex, or better. The “faun” wakes up to a new day of happy hunting because the proof of the pudding is irrelevant, it is the joy of finding the ingredients that matters. Whether out on the streets or at his job in an office, he does not relent in his hopeful approaches to mainly young women, who mainly ignore him. No one is more aware of his skirt-chasing than an older companion in the same office who has loved him from the beginning. And the big question is, will the late-blooming Don Juan come to his senses?Read More »

Documentary essay from famous Czech director Vera Chytilova. History and present of magic city in the heart of Europe. People and Time in new context.
Film was produced within series of documentaries about great European cities by eyes of great directors.Read More »

Quote:
Two stories are simultaneously told. One dutiful mother progressively becomes a frustrated woman who is the only one assuming the family responsibilities of working at home and looking after her only son, whereas her husband works all day, does not appreciate his wife’s efforts and the only thing he does by the time he gets home is to read the newspaper and watch soccer matches. On the other hand, a female gymnast prepares for her last competition before her career retirement, but faces pressure from her trainer and a lack of motivation to keep going. The film depicts frustration on both sides, and parallels two worlds dominated by men, where women do not receive any recognition, and in case they do, it is momentary.Read More »

When Alžbeta decides to stay in Dublin only with the help of the strange and dark-minded Ducky, her past actions (connected with her older sister Martina and her fiancé Steve) come back with great intensity and the dark truth about two sisters is finally revealed. This is an immigrant story about jealousy, dependency, but mainly about sisters’ love and reunionRead More »