Quote:
F. A. Brabec’s Král Ubu is a film for wide audiences made for the centennial of the first performance of French playwright Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896). It is a cruel picture of the ways in which human beings acquire power and then cling to it. The story of Father Ubu, an idiot who climbs over the bodies of the dead to his royal post, is presented with a touch of the grotesque where naive comic elements meet black humor. Using a human touch, the film- makers were able to transform the original into a film aimed at a contemporary audience while remaining faithful to the vision of Father Ubu and Mother Ubu venturing everything in their efforts to seize power and mammon. Impressive concerning its artistic design, the film depicts the never-ending grotesque victories of a vulgar ruler. Ubu is the feature film debut of the successful Czech cinematographer F. A. Brabec (b. 1954). Brabec, who had worked previously as a cameraman with such luminaries of Czech cinema as Jan Nemec, collaborated with Miloš Macourek on the script (Macourek was involved in the staging of Grossmann’s famous production of the play in 1964), The film’s cast includes many Czech celebrities (Lucie Bílá, a singer, playing the role of Mother Ubu, comedians Marián Labuda in the role of Father Ubu and Bolek Polívka in the role of king Wenceslas).

Nominated for seven Czech Lions in 1997, Král Ubu won three of them: for Best Cinematography (Brabec), for Music (Lubos Fiser) and for Design Achievment (Jindrich Götz). Comedian Bolek Polivka, who plays King Wenceslas in Ubu, was also voted best actor for his dramatic role as Vicar Holý in Forgotten Light (Zapomenuté svetlo) beating Mariá

Name..........: kral ubu.avi
Filesize......: 700Mb
Runtime.......: 01:23:55
Video Codec...: DivX5
Video Bitrate.: 1Mbps
Frame Size....: 640x368
Frame Rate....: 25fps
Audio Codec...: mp3
Audio Bitrate.: 128Kbps
Audio Freq....: 48KHz
Audio Channels: Stereo

https://nitro.download/view/823513947563E2D/kral_ubu.avi

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:None

The post F.A. Brabec – Král Ubu AKA Ubu Roi (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.

Habermann (Czech: Habermannův mlýn) is a 2010 Czech-German-Austrian drama film directed by Juraj Herz. In the story, a German mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.

Quote:
The German-Czech-Austrian production “Habermann” is being marketed — with the tagline “War is over; vengeance has begun” — as a look at a corner of history that is little known in America: the expulsion of millions of ethnic German civilians from parts of Europe after World War II. It’s a tricky tale to tell; the film’s opening and closing scenes of Germans in Czechoslovakia being rounded up and loaded onto trains consciously echo the familiar imagery of Jews being sent to Nazi concentration camps.

“Habermann,” however, consists almost entirely of the background to those brutal scenes. It’s the story of the title character, a more or less good German and minor-league Schindler who tries to mitigate the worst excesses of the seven-year Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland while protecting the Czech workers at his saw mill. As directed by the Czech veteran Juraj Herz in prestige-television style, the bulk of the film is a classically proportioned and tasteful wartime soap opera. Even though we know the closing spasm of violence is coming, it’s so out of tune with what’s come before that it’s more disorienting than powerful.

The depictions of cosmopolitan Germans and mostly avaricious, bestial Czechs are likely to stir strong emotions among some viewers, but over all ‘Habermann’ is more potboiler than political or historical statement. A subplot involving Habermann’s half-Jewish wife sits awkwardly athwart the central story, supplying pathos and dangerously facile analogies.

(From New York Times)

2.24GB | 1 h 44 min | 1024×554 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/0152136795D2EA1/Habermann.576p.mkv

Language:German, some Czech
Subtitles:English & German hardsubs for the few Czech parts

The post Juraj Herz – Habermann (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This acerbic biographical comedy subtitled “I Think You Should Calm Down, Ladies…!” is loosely inspired by the life of renowned photographer and celebrity Jan Saudek, outstandingly portrayed by Karel Roden. The film, appealing in its theme and treatment, focuses on the maestro’s relationships with women, specifically the devoted Líba, who enjoys subtle yet complete control over Jan (her character is undeniably inspired by his former partner Sára Saudková). In addition to numerous indelicate scenes, the brief flashbacks also reveal Jan’s ill-fated past (conflicts with the police and state security agents, a nightmare from his childhood), and there’s also room for staging Saudek’s famous photographic nudes, for which the models were usually morbidly obese. Pavlásková also exposes the artist’s quirky personality, where exhibitionism and vanity go hand in hand with Saudek’s fragility and male naivety, and his desire to extricate himself from his private solitude.

https://nitro.download/view/0ADAB417E203728/Irena_Pavlaskova_-_(2015)_Fotograf.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Irena Pavlásková – Fotograf (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.