František Peterka

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.

Tram driver Marie has far too much to do after her shift is over. But she likes to do it all since she loves her husband Václav sincerely. One day she spots him on the Lesser Town Square in Prague, kissing an attractive blonde good-bye. It seems to Marie that her small comfortable world has collapsed and she walks out of the tram in tears. But her sadness does not last long. She wipes off the tears and begins to act. She withdraws all the money from their savings books and buys off all the latest models from the Fashion Works. The visit to the beauty salon then completes her transformation into a lady.

Former Nazi Klaus Abard survives to the 1990s by taking anti-ageing pills. He plans to use a time travel trip to return to Germany in 1944 and present Hitler with a hydrogen bomb, so that he can win the war. Unfortunately the pilot, woman-chasing Karel Bures, dies on the morning of the trip and his earnest twin brother Jan impersonates him, without knowing about the plot.

A group of outcasts, including a vagabond and a prostitute, gather at the outskirts of the industrial area of a large Czech city, one of the things that helps some of them survive is alcohol.

This satirical comedy depicts the fate of two con artists who constantly encounter sharper and more experienced rivals. In their quest for easy profits, they often change several jobs and come up with a variety of original tricks and thievery. Each time, however, someone else profits from their ideas. And when they seek revenge on their crooked rivals, they end up back where they started - behind bars...

For the Novák and Bartáček families, money is king, and they'll do just about anything to get it. While René Novák pitches his parents a lucrative scheme to swindle as many people with the last name Novák in the country as possible, the Bartáček clan decides to pretend to be much poorer than they really are in order to siphon some dollars from an American relative. And it doesn't take long before these separate scams start to intertwine.

A sincere provincial young man, Frantisek Koudelka leaves to work in Prague. For the trip he buys a computer made horoscope with biorhythms charts, marked according to his date of birth, there are trappy, precarious, unsuccessful and even critical days and few successful days. The clumsy luckless person Frantisek has finally a guidance for his life.

Ostrava - Kunčice , 1953: on the same day as the manifestation funeral for J. V. Stalin, the funeral of Brigadier Bédi Nevěřil, a tragic victim of the bureaucratic cadre machine... The story unfolds in the memoirs of another brigadier, former journalist Karel Kratochvil.

Marta (Jana Brejchová) and Viktor (Vlastimil Brodský) celebrate the tenth anniversary of their wedding half-heartedly. They both think they don't suit together. While visiting Marta's friend Alena (Iva Janzurová), who just got married for the third time, they learn an interesting thing. It was a computer which selected a husband for Alena and she claims she is happy. The couple gets off after certain hesitation to a cybernetic institute, where the computer tells them that living together is a risk for them. At the same time the computer selects them ideal partners - Mrs Tuchlová, a doctor for Viktor, and Petr Karát, a music composer for Marta. By a coincidence Viktor and Marta meet wrong people.

It is 5 May 1945 and the uprising against the hated German occupiers has broken out in Prague. The Czech guards open the gate of the Pankrác prison to allow the prisoners to escape en masse. Many of them are shot dead by the German guards but young Ruda (Jaromír Hanzlík) manages to run away. He is taken care of by one of the Prague fighters, concierge Kytka. Kytka hides him in the flat of the house's owner where only the young maid Karla (Jana Brejchová) is left, ordering her to take care of Ruda.

The bridegroom Jan Kaspar is an officer in the Klement Gottwald's Nová Hut rolling-mill. After bidding farewell to his freedom, he accidentally takes a sip from the bottle of tetrachlore which he stores at home. He disregards the dizziness, but the next day, he faints in the factory and has a brain concussion. During her regular tests, doctor Dudková is shocked by a high percentage of residual nitrogen found in Kaspar's blood. Doctor Bohácek, with whom Dudková consults, thinks that it is a liver disease and informs the head physician Filip. The doctors know nothing about tetrachlore and are in the dark about the case. Despite that, they immediately start to fight for Kaspar's life and their struggle consequently affects their personal lives.

The Ronov castle has been changed into a hotel, offering stylish facilities to its guests: weddings in the torture chamber, a Black Lancer kidnapping brides, a night's lodging in a family tomb etc. The reformed petty swindler Felix Pacínek (Bohumil Smída) runs the hotel. The business is far from thriving; the place is half-empty, and the jazz band Skeleton, together with their singer Zuzanka (Jaroslava Obermaierová), decide to leave. Nobody in the hotel has any idea that the band is in fact a gang of thieves who have just robbed the Prague State Bank, taking two million crowns from its vaults.

To the intolerant and bloody-minded Prague actor Bergner (Milos Kopecký) is the lead in Moliere's Misanthrope which he is studying now as tailor-made. On top of that he is malicious and he advises to the new actress Helenka (Dagmar Havlová) in such a way that she upsets the theatre director. If Bergner accuses somebody of a mischief and he is wrong, he never apologizes. When he almost crashes an older elegant lady by his car on the zebra crossing, instead of an apology he calls her an old ballet dancer... But in Brno's TV he takes part in a discussion on manners and he gives himself as an example of good manners and grace. In the train he meets a magic old man (Ladislav Pesek) who warns him and admonishes him to change his behavior. After he arrives to Prague the old man's threat comes true.

We learn that the greatest virtue of socialist competition is collective cooperation. This is what the young, physically fit assembler refuses to understand. He suspects his co-workers of overlooking his merits out of jealousy. And it takes him a long time to understand that the individual alone can do nothing, that only the collective has the necessary strength - and therefore the truth.

The shoemaker, Lájošek Cína, is a naive good-for-nothing with his heart on his sleeve, who, as the day grows long, never leaves his shop, where he also sleeps, and his only company is a small stray kitten. One day he is approached by a peculiar truck driver, Martin, who immediately adopts Lájošek as his new driver and becomes his life guide with a plan to rebuild his peaceful life from the ground up. In the Žižkov colony at Krejcárk he meets the charming Magda, with whom Lájošek falls in love and begins to live with her and her four children. Soon after, they are expecting their own and their life would seem ideal, but every happiness comes at a price...

Adventures of the "How to Rip Whale Tooth" (1977) heroes continue... The story takes place in the countryside, where little Vashko's dad takes him and his mother, and where another surprise awaits them: not only an excellent holiday in the setting of a rock town, but also the figure of a grandfather, understanding all the dangerous beliefs in the turbulent surface of the renewed relationship of the three closest people. Vasek's other wish comes true - his dad teaches him the secrets of rock climbing. This shared passion, however, causes further conflicts between the two parents - much to the chagrin of both Vasek and his grandfather.

Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.

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

Kinoautomat was the world's first interactive movie, conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played.

Mr. Novak tells a lie to his neighbor Mrs. Bartackova that her husband is unfaithful to her and that is how it all started.

In the thick woods at the edge of the Bohemian Forest, two border guards are keeping watch - rifleman Kucera (Rudolf Jelínek) and dog handler Stencl (Josef Hajducík), whose sluggishness and clumsiness have won him the nickname Simpleton. The official army dog, the bitch Líza, picks up the scent of an alien dog on the German side - Black Wolf. She bites through her leash and runs away. Soon afterwards, the border boundary was interrupted. The two soldiers are wounded in the gunfire that follows, but Stencl's shot also hits the target and the intruder - an attractive woman in a black jersey - is dead. The investigation reveals that this agent knew someone among the local residents. The locals are all called in to identify the body but nobody admits to knowing the woman.

Detective Lieutenant Boruvka (Lubomír Lipský) is called to the State Scientific Library to investigate the loss of a precious manuscript, the Infernal Psalter of the Occult Sciences by Master Peregrinus from the eleventh century, written in a secret script which has only recently been deciphered by senior lecturer Zajíc (Josef Chvalina). Chaos is reigning in the labyrinth of passages and halls of the former monastery where the library is housed. In order to save space the director of the library has introduced a peculiar system. The books are arranged in the bookcases according to height and six girls dressed in black, the library assistants, are quite happy to cut volumes down to size in case of need. Boruvka refuses the case, since he is specialist in murders. He has to return to the investigation, however, when senior lecturer Zajíc disappears.

A communist agent, who has successfully caught on with the stupidly gullible American secret services, does not have it easy - he is threatened with exposal, but he still rescues a Czech scientist whom the evil imperialists wanted to kidnap. It was supposed to be a psychological portrait of an intelligence officer under intense stress, yet convinced of his truth...

A rumour that a large holiday resort is supposedly being built on the banks of the local pond causes confusion among the villagers.

Adam is a young farmer. As a child, fleeing the bleak reality of his mother's life as a prostitute, he tumbled from a mountain and was mentally injured. Years later, his mother is dying, so Adam sells their only cow to pay for medicine. Rosa, a beautiful young maid, fleeing the sexual exploitation of a wealthy butcher, climbs up to join them on their remote farm and dares to become part of Adam's world. A cycle of life begins again, in a remote turn-of-the-century village tied to the land and its animals.

No description available.

Albrechtice near Jablonec. Sixteen-year-old Pavlínka Linková lives with her grandmother Barbara, a local midwife who raised her after the death of the girl's parents. The charming girl experiences her first amorous outburst towards Pavel Žák, a young textile worker in nearby Svárovo. Her grandmother, however, prevents her from contacting Pavel in every possible way. Firstly, as a midwife, she knows well what can happen, and secondly, she remembers her old adventures well. Love, however, cannot be ordered around, especially not by a worried grandmother. But there are other obstacles. The textile workers of Svárovo are planning a strike and a demonstration against redundancies and wage cuts, and the factory director is preparing a vigorous response. The year is 1870 and the unsuspecting Pavlina finds herself in the middle of events that will go down in history...

A divorced single mother romances a young slaughterhouse worker, must to the chagrin of her ex-husband.

When Dr. Hahn is found murdered in the hospital’s inspection room, investigators question several suspects: his colleague and longtime lover Dr. Marie Nováková (whom he cheated on with nurse Jiřina), the nurse herself, Dr. Petera (whose career he stymied), a senile patient named Zima, and the inept clinic head. As police sift through truthful and deceptive testimonies, complex professional rivalries and personal entanglements among the hospital staff come to light.

In the forest near the village of Drahovice, a nurse from the local health center is found murdered. Three months ago, another young woman died nearby and a sexual motive was proved in the case of her murder. In the case of the nurse, the motives are not so clear. Two criminologists from Prague - Major Kalas (Rudolf Hrusínský) and Lieutenant Varga (Radoslav Brzobohatý) - patiently collect all available leads and question the villagers.

American agents hijack a plane on the Ostrava-Prague route to launch a campaign against the People's Democratic Czechoslovakia. The plane lands in West Germany, but the Americans have an unexpected problem convincing the hijackers to stay in the West. Based on a true story.

The happenings in a shoe factory serve as a not very thinly veiled examination of the pros and cons of both socialism and democracy.

A fictionalized account of Czech soldiers who fought for the French Foreign Legion in Vietnam.

Biography of Karel Čapek.