Quote:
The story of a boy and his dog is a classic motif of children’s films. However, Franstišek Vláčil transformed this well-established convention into something sadly poetic, perfectly befitting the tenor of his time. As was the case with many artists, the post-Soviet Invasion years were not kind to Vláčil’s career, but by the mid 1970’s he was eventually allowed to take the reins of a smattering of short documentaries and films for young audiences. Though ostensibly one such children’s film, the adult world tragically intrudes in Sirius, Vláčil’s elegiac WWII-era coming of age film, which screens this Saturday afternoon as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Fantastic World of Franstišek Vláčil retrospective now underway at the Walter Reade Theater.

Sirius (or “Sir” as he is affectionately called) is not quite Lassie, but his ability to communicate and follow the instructions of his master is impressive nonetheless. Fascinated by the night sky, the director’s young namesake named the loyal canine after the Dog Star, the brightest star visible from Earth with the naked eye. Franstišek’s days appear to be filled with child-like wonder, as he and Sir commune with the nature. It seems their only cause for concern is the Bo Radley-esque forest-keeper who makes no secret of his ill will toward the animal. All that changes when a Nazi troop train blows up right before his eyes. Suddenly, the Germans are keenly aware of Franstišek’s station agent father as well as his spirited dog.

Though comparatively brief at a mere fifty minutes, Vláčil still takes his time establishing the rapport between boy and dog. Indeed, most of the film has a pastoral feel, though a sense of foreboding looms over the film. Clearly, there was a very competent dog trainer working behind the scenes, but Michal Vavrusa is also surprisingly understated and engaging as Franstišek.

Sirius could be considered an Old Yeller from behind the Iron Curtain.Yet, Vláčil slyly employs astronomical motifs to add a metaphysical-allegorical dimension unlike anything in Disney films. Though it burns brightly, we are told Sirius the star is due to temporarily disappear from the horizon. Likewise, the National Socialist occupiers may appear all-powerful, but they too shall pass (as their Communist successors did, as well).

Beautiful in its simplicity and directness, Sirus is a rewarding film for both smart kids and relatively smart adults.

Sirius---František-Vláčil-1974.avi


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Container:  	AVI
Runtime: 	47mn 59s
Size: 	1 001 MiB
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https://nitro.download/view/7C19DDDD4103456/Sirius-Frantisek-Vlacil-1974.avi
https://nitro.download/view/7E60990485141A2/Sirius—Frantisek-Vlacil-1974.srt

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Sirius (1975)  first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Vlacils tribute to winter Prague.

Mesto.v.bilem.1972.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

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Runtime: 	15 min 35 s
Size: 	412 MiB
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https://nitro.download/view/21DF530BE87139C/Mesto.v.bilem.1972.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):No Dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Mesto v bílém AKA The Town in White (1972) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father’s properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

Quote:
It is hard to watch Frantisek Vlácil’s 1968 movie The Valley of the Bees (Údolí včel) without comparing it with the liberation movement of the Prague Spring that lasted until the end of summer of that same year. Although set during the middle ages, the film is essentially a meditation on the question of ideology, whether to repudiate it or not, and if yes, by what means. Portraying the story of a political traitor, the film perpetrates historical meaning, perhaps in spite of itself. It thus reflects the resistance attempts in Czechoslovakia against the repressive political and social conditions of the Soviet regime.

Ondrej is the son of the sovereign of a remote village in 13th century Bohemia. He’s given over to an anonymous Christian Order when he refuses to accept his father’s new wife, who seems to be closer in age to Ondrej than his father, as a mother. At the convent, he is raised by the overly devout Armin von Heide, who spends most of his life fasting, crusading, and searching for salvation. Armin is an obedient minister to the religious policies of his time. But he has one thing in common with his young friend. They are both fascinated by the sight of the endless sea, which soon turns out into a metaphor for a distant promise. But the magic of distance is deceiving. It only allows them to dream about the possibility of escape. To actually renounce the Order that keeps them on land does not seem to be an option. But unlike his older companion, Ondrej soon begins to disagree with the restrictive rites of authority. He finally runs off after spending some time in prison for having been innocently involved in the escape plan of a fellow knight.

The Valley of the Bees is a film about making decisions in a world where there is little or nothing left to decide. Decision-making remains crucial to every liberalization because it involves having to act independently and establish a conscious position against the conscious-thwarting standards that it is trying to overcome. It is worth thinking about, whether Ondrej’s return to the sea at the end of the film is really a relinquishing of the activity he tried to pursue or whether it is a necessary grief over something he has finished with.

Udolí.vcel.1968.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

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https://nitro.download/view/4232E23ADE86B65/Udoli.vcel.1968.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Údolí vcel AKA The Valley of the Bees (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

PLOT: In the aftermath of World War II, a former Czech soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family. He falls in love with the daughter, who is now a maid, and is forced to confront the stress between his love and his conscience when he discovers her sheltering her German-soldier brother.

Adelheid.1970.Frantisek.Vlacil.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264.mkv

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https://nitro.download/view/0A51D64A090D2A1/Adelheid.1970.Frantisek.Vlacil.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English, French, Turkish, Greek, Czech [SDH], German

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Adelheid (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The partnership between director František Vláčil and screenwriter Vladimír Körner yielded films including Adelheid (Adelheid, 1969), Pověst o stříbrné jedli (The Legend of the Silver Fir, 1973) and Stín kapradiny (The Shadow of a Ferns, 1984). But it is the historical drama Údolí včel (The Valley of the Bees, 1967) that is widely regarded as the pair’s greatest collaborative achievement. Released in cinemas shortly after Vláčil’s highly acclaimed Marketa Lazarová (Marketa Lazarová, 1967), The Valley of the Bees came about as a result of efforts to reuse the props and costumes from the director’s previous opus – hitherto the most expensive Czechoslovak film of all time. Körner’s compact concept is very different from the ambitious, expansive adaptation of author Vladislav Vančura’s historical novel Marketa Lazarová. While the former film told the story of Christianity’s battle with paganism, The Valley of the Bees is more of a timeless picture representing a battle between asceticism and freedom. Similarly to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Sedmá pečeť, 1957), the film is highly philosophical; a non-romanticised view of the Middle Ages, which, instead of putting forward battle scenes, focuses on the internal conflicts of its characters. The protagonists of the story are two Teutonic Knights of the Cross, Armin von Heide and his Bohemian protégé Ondřej. The young aristocrat, whose father appointed him to the Order in childhood, escapes the castle where he grew up indoctrinated in asceticism and prayer. But the fanatical Armin keeps his companion under surveillance, following him to his hometown of Vlkov, and thwarting Ondřej’s attempts to lead a happy life with the lovely Lenora. The return of the desperate Ondřej to the Order as the only possible home that remains available to him was viewed by “normalisation” era censors as so controversial that for a 1977 TV version, they created a notably different “new” version with a truncated ending. This visually polished piece stars Petr Čepek as Ondřej, and Jan Kačer as Armin. Unlike Marketa Lazarová , the film did not find favour with critics and audiences. But the film has since been reappraised, and is today widely viewed as a Czechoslovak film classic.

Udoli.vcel.1968.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	4.12 GiB
Video
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https://nitro.download/view/3B26F6A320BDF87/Udoli.vcel.1968.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English, Czech

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Udoli vcel AKA Valley of the Bees (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

It is 1947 and the Beskydy Mountains still display traces of war. A ten-year old boy pastures a herd of cows in a meadow housing a damaged German tank. The little herdsman lives with his half-blind grandfather in a village poorhouse. His mother Kateřina, an apathetic and unhinged woman, works for the farmer Potocký. The boy has no father. He has got used to working from morning till evening and he never attended school. No one ever stands up for him, only Uncle Králík comes from time to time and brings him a gift. He also enjoys the love of his granddad who often tells him stories about the elf king and his treasure. In the meantime, two members of the troops supporting the Ukrainian nationalist Bandera, nicknamed Blondy and Beardy, have a deal with the village mayor that a sabotage group will pass through the village…

During his career as a director, František Vláčil didn’t pay much attention to children’s heroes: apart from the highly praised Holubice (The White Dove, 1960), Pověst o stříbrné jedli (The Legend of the Silver Fir, 1973) and Sirius (1974), he also directed Pasáček z doliny (The Little Herdsman from the Valley, 1983), inspired by the renowned author Ladislav Fuks’ novel. Although Jiří Fried and the experienced screenwriter Jiří Křižan worked on the script – telling the story of a simple village boy who finds an escape in the fairytales told by his grandfather – interest in this Vláčil film remained marginal. The ballad-like tales are set during the summer of 1947 in Wallachia, but they nonetheless resonate with the other works in the director’s dynamic opus set in the post-war years – Adelheid (1969) – and Stíny horkého léta (Shadows of a Hot Summer, 1977). The young Vlastimil Drbal also appeared in Vláčil’s Stín kapradiny (The Shadow of a Fern, 1984). The role of the grandfather went to Josef Kemr, whom Vláčil first met during the shooting of Marketa Lazarová (1967) and for the final time in the Karel Hynek Mácha drama Mág. (The Magician, 1987).

Pasacek.z.doliny.1983.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
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https://nitro.download/view/C8314F53E2EA031/Pasacek.z.doliny.1983.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English, Czech

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Pasácek z doliny AKA The Little Shepherd Boy from the Valley (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A poetic film about a dove getting lost on its way to Prague getting shot down by a paralyzed boy. An artist who finds the dove becomes friends with the boy. Together they take care of it bringing it back to recovery.

Quote:
This is truly magnificent film that I can not recommend more. As per the Facets booklet: “Nearly wordless, the film is dependent on lighting and imagery to tell the story and evoke a melancholy mood. Vlacil worked on the script for over a year, continually paring down the dialogue to a bare minimum. The narrative consists of eleven ‘poetical parts’ as Vlacil referred to them, witheach part containing only a few scenes….. composed shots in a very deliberate way, making striking use of the landscape and architecture…… yet imagery is not merely an exercise in form and composition. Like good poetry, it evokes an emotional response and brings our the film’s humanism.”

Quote:
Frantisek Vlacil’s debut feature, poetically photographed by Jan Curik, helped to establish the Czech New Wave as a vital force in world cinema in the 1960s. A metaphor for freedom, the inspirational drama follows the journey of an innocent carrier pigeon that affects the life of everyone it encounters in its quest to return home to its owner. Along the way, the pigeon receives care and love from a variety of individuals, all of whom are drawn to the bird’s mysteriously powerful energy.

The.White.Dove.1960.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

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Codec: 	x264
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https://nitro.download/view/D59BF3AD1DC4511/The.White.Dove.1960.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

https://fikper.com/7ftbAPYCwL/The.White.Dove.1960.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Holubice AKA The White Dove (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.