Miroslav Macháček
1922 - 1991Scalpel, please
Jiří Svoboda
Miroslav Macháček, Jana Brejchová
A psychological drama exploring the notion of the doctor as a moral authority, who within the framework of their everyday work must face questions of life and death. The film is adapted from a novel by Valja Stýblová, in which the author draws upon her personal experiences as a former neurosurgeon. The protagonist of this drama is an ageing professor, based at a Prague neurological clinic, who is haunted by issues concerning his own principles and values, and also by the case of a young patient, Víťa, afflicted with an inoperable tumour.
Scalpel, Please
Údolí včel
František Vláčil
Jan Kačer, Věra Galatíková
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.
The Valley of the Bees
Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself
Juraj Jakubisko
Bolek Polívka, Ondřej Pavelka
Pepe and Prengel, returning from war, meet Ester and both fall in love with the girl and live together in a deserted house. Fanatic communist, Zelmira, wants to turn their world upside-down.
Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself
The Devil's Trap
František Vláčil
Vítězslav Vejražka, Miroslav Macháček
A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil.
The Devil's Trap
Sarâb
Abdelhafidh Bouassida
Yorgo Voyagis, Bekim Fehmiu
Mamluk is an unassuming, handsome young peasant who happens to have come along just in time to save the king from a fatal trap, and as a reward, the king offers him the amount of land he can mark off by walking around in one day but he must return to the starting point before sunset.
The Balad of Mamelouk
…And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear
Zbyněk Brynych
Miroslav Macháček, Olga Scheinpflugová
In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a doctor-turned-warehouse employee reluctantly agrees to treat a gravely wounded political fugitive, putting himself and everyone living in his building complex in danger.
The Fifth Horseman Is Fear
White Cloud Carolin
Rolf Losansky
Andreas Roll, Constanze Berndt
It's no big secret that twelve-year-old Hannes is in love with his classmate Carolin, who he compares to a beautiful white cloud in the sky. But when Carolin spends most of her time exploring the village's history with Benno, Hannes becomes increasingly jealous of his rival. The only person who is happy about this situation is Kerstin, who is in fact interested in Hannes. In order to impress Carolin, Hannes takes her and several others out for a boat ride in the nearby Bay of Greifswald, but his plan takes a deadly turn as a storm approaches.
White Cloud Carolin
Case for a Rookie Hangman
Pavel Juráček
Lubomír Kostelka, Klára Jerneková
Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.
Case for a Rookie Hangman
Chobotnice z II. patra
Jindřich Polák
Dagmar Veškrnová-Havlová, Pavel Zedníček
While on vacation with their bickering parents, young Eva and her little brother Johnny find in a polluted lake two strange friendly sentient octopuses made of strange material that attracts electricity. They take them as pets.
The Octopuses from the Second Floor
322
Dušan Hanák
Václav Lohniský, Lucyna Winnicka
A story of a man threatened by a fatal illness evaluating his life (the number 322 in the film title stands for the diagnosis of one kind of cancer). He understands his illness as a form of punishment for his cruel deeds in the 1950s. In the face of reality and his efforts to cleanse himself he hits a barrier of indifference, lack of interest, and individual and collective selfishness. He has to find his own reconciliation with his illness and his past and present life.
322
Shades of Fern
František Vláčil
Marek Probosz, Zbigniew Suszyński
Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.
Shades of Fern
