Jirí Menzel

Comedy about the people who inhabit a small town. For years the overbearing Pavek has endured Otik, the "town idiot," sharing his meals and the front seat of their dump truck. But Otik is such a sweet-natured fool that Pavek, exasperated as he becomes, always relents on his threats to find another partner. This Laurel and Hardy-like pair are at the heart of a comedy which finds humor in an abundance of everyday situations.

A young man follows his father's footsteps and joins the railway company, where he learns the job and has his first affair... (imdb)

A look at the glamorous life at an old-world Prague hotel. (imdb)

A film about a local brewery director, his wife and their life in the brewery. (imdb)

Set in a small Ukrainian village during the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941 Private Chonkin, not overly endowed with intelligence, is left to guard a downed military aircraft. The authorities appear to have forgotten about him so this leaves him free to work his chams on the village postmistress, Njura, untill the local militia are tipped off. (imdb)

Prague in the early 1950's. Bourgeois elements are being re-educated by working in a scrapyard full of the detritus of industrial society. (imdb)

Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... (imdb)

Gathering five seminal figures of the Czech New Wave at the dawn of their careers for the first celluloid transliteration of Bohumil Hrabal, Pearls of the Deep has cultural and historical cachet to burn, but as with most omnibus films the on-screen results are mixed. (prague.tv)

It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. (imdb)

A family of uptight city dwellers rent a rundown cottage in the country that they intend to buy and renovate to their taste. Unfortunately, after they have settled in, their elderly landlord reconsiders his decision to sell... (Channel 4)

This 1978 film, set in 1907, is a tribute commemorating the 80th year of Czechoslovak filmmaking. Among the accomplishments of Czechoslovak filmmakers of the period are, the improvement on the Lumière camera and the creation of a commercially viable indigenous cinema years before Berlin. Czechoslovak films were sufficiently distinctive and plentiful to make a notable contribution to world cinema of the time. In this movie, the filming of several one-reel movies of the period is re-enacted.

The Don Juans looks at a small town opera company's efforts to mount a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The eccentric director Vitek has unusual views on opera and uses the production as an excuse to bed every woman he meets. Passions flare onstage and behind the scenes as the small company prepares for a wholly unique adaptation of the Mozart classic. (chicagofilmfestival.com)

Crime in the café-concert is both a comedy and a detective anti-totalitarian allegory set in a Prague's old cabaret. The star is a local singer who has fallen in love with the Minister of Justice. The plot revolves around the theft of a necklace of pearls and the murder of a juggler. A busybody employee is immersed in the web of intrigue with a law student

An idiosyncratic reflection on the film Larks on a String and its history, shot by it's director Jiri Menzel.

Views of old Prague and its tenement buildings, symbolizing the obsolete past, alternate with shots of construction sites for new prefabricated apartment buildings. (imdb)

The childhood memories of Bohumil Hrabal living in his provincial hometown of Nymburk. (imdb)

A mysterious visitor makes a mess of a wealthy family.

An adaptation of the famous play.