Jan Němec

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Deckname Holec

Young director Honza David films the Russian invasion in in Prague in August 1968. With Eva the love of his life he tries to get out of the country. He wants to bring the explosive material to Vienna, to the director of the Austrian Television Helmut Zilk. He knows Eva very well but the Czech Secret Service even better ...

The Party and the Guests

A group of the bourgeois head for a prominent figure's birthday party. As they venture through the woods and have a picnic, they're suddenly surrounded by some suspicious strangers.

Martyrs of Love

Three loosely-connected tales that represent different aspects of love: temptation, dreams, and adventure.

Diamonds of the Night

Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Beyond themes of war and anti-Nazism, the film concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.

A Memory for the Present

Reflecting on the memory and legacy of the Second World War.

The Ferrari Dino Girl

It's nighttime in Prague, 21 August 1968. Soviet troops and tanks are occupying the city - random attacks, soldiers shooting, bodies lying dead on the sidewalk. With an impromptu crew, the director (Karel Roden) captures some unique evidence - material which is, however, worthless in occupied Prague; it has to be shown to the rest of the world. So, while the Soviets are concocting false reports of heartfelt receptions without military resistance for propaganda purposes, the director sets off on a risky trip across the closed Czech-Austrian border to Vienna.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Cinematic Cut

It’s the year 1403, and the Bohemian Kingdom is in chaos. While roaming marauders sow fear and terror through a kingdom without a clear ruler, Henry of Skalitz seeks to avenge his murdered parents. As an ally of the rightful king, he is sent to accompany Sir Hans Capon on a diplomatic mission. After they are brutally attacked, however, Henry and Hans undergo a series of dangerous adventures that subject them and their friendship to the ultimate test.

'68

A Hungarian immigrant adjusts to life in California, as his sons venture off into their own adult lives, which often clash with his old world ideas.

Late Night Talks with Mother

Taking a cue from Franz Kafka's "Letter to My Father," this highly personal film follows Czech director Jan Nemec as he attempts to engage in a dialogue with his deceased mother. While alive, Nemec's mother had a troubled relationship with her son; this rumination seems to be Nemec's public platform for coming to terms with unresolved familial issues. The director embellishes his film by linking personal events with 20th century history.

Pearls of the Deep

A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle races results in drunkenness, long-winded discussions, and death; two elderly men create false biographies; insurance agents visit an eccentric painter/goat farmer and his mother; guests at a wedding reception remain oblivious to outlying misery; and a working-class boy romances a Roma girl.

Corpus delicti

The subject of this film, which takes an analytical look at the life of all of us with an analytical eye, is the evil microbe that has slowly infiltrated the organism of the Czech nation. Through the intertwining fates of three couples, it evokes domestic life before November 1989, burdened by a suffocating atmosphere of unfreedom, and after November, when relatively nothing has changed because people have not changed. The bleak conclusion suggests that the plague epidemic is still ongoing.

Killing the Devil

A lonely woman gets more than she bargained for when she begins wooing Mr Devil, an insatiable glutton who turns out to be the boyfriend from Hell.

The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street

The film tells the life story of its director, Jan Nemec, one of the most known and important filmmakers of Czech New Wave.

Heart Beat 3D

A visual dreamscape of Prague streets, a hallucinatory vision of a world from the operating table for robotic heart surgeries, collaged together with the stories narrated by the mysterious Dr. B, who is a gifted surgeon at the centre of a conspiracy and a criminal ring trafficking in human parts, especially hearts. Because that’s where the world has ended up – humans thirsting for endless lives and shadowy businessmen and dealmakers taking advantage of this hunger. Set to original music by Němec’s student and fellow filmmaker Petr Marek and his band Midi Lidi, the rich soundscape of the film creates a distinct counterpart to the freewheeling visuals shot digitally in 3D. The former Czech president Václav Havel makes an appearance in the film recalling a script he wrote in the 1960s with Němec, his distant cousin, which the present film utilises as a reflecting surface.

Flames of Royal Love

In 1992, Prague is the capital of a small kingdom. The prince is supposed to choose his bride to be at a royal ball. But to everybody's surprise, he chooses an ugly cleaning-woman. She is shy and silent, but after the marriage she turns into a wild and rumbustious woman with an obstinate and stubborn mind. They both try to kill each other, but the queen is thrown into the dungeons.

Metamorphosis

Travelling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes to find that he's been transformed into a giant insect. This particular Franz Kafka adaptation is seen from Gregor's point of view, continuing to explore themes of alienation, family duty, and the absurdity of modern life as the Samsa clan cope with how to go on with the situation at hand.

Osení

Set in a village, the story of a simple-minded, not-so-responsible young man who still manages to take care of his younger siblings after their father has left the family. Good thing he could lean on the principles of exemplary socialist morality. Not surprisingly, the attempt to capture something of the mentality and conditions of the contemporary village breaks down into simple, poster-like lessons.

Toyen

Jan Nemec, a leading filmmaker of the Czech New Wave, creates an original portrait of one of the most provocative artists of the 20th century: Toyen (Marie Cerminova). As a female artist, Toyen broke through the male-dominated art world to create paintings and drawings often erotic in nature. She co-founded the surrealist movement in her native Prague, survived the Nazis and the Communists, maintained artistic and personal relationships with artists Jindrich Heisler (whom she hid during WWII) and Jindrich Styrsky.

Oratorio for Prague

A unique document of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, what began as a documentary about the liberalization of Czechoslovakia evolved into a record of the entry of Russian tanks into Prague.

Seven Days to Remember

The Soviet advance met with fierce, idealistic resistance. We join the hundreds of students as they man barricades constructed from overturned lorries to try to halt the advance. Sparsely armed, they fight fiercely, driven by a belief in their new and better socialism. But the deadening, inevitable weight of Soviet might soon stamps its boot across this hopeful Czech vision. Over 100 people died in the reprisals which followed, and tens of thousands fled their homes for the West. This is the definitive story of the heady days before Soviet "normalisation" took hold. The film was assembled using footage smuggled out of Prague. What began as an account of the liberation of a people, became a documentary of oppression; as the tanks moved in, the cameras simply continued rolling.

Arnost Lustig Through the Eyes of Jan Nemec

In this fourteen-minute film from 1993, director Jan Němec pays tribute to author Arnošt Lustig, whose work he adapted for Loaf of Bread and DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT.

Necklace of Melancholy

A musical portrait of the legendary Marta Kubišová, filmed just before the August 1968 invasion restricted her artistic activities.

A Loaf of Bread

By the end of the second World War, three prisoners wish to escape from the train carrying them from one concentration camp to another. To make it happen, they need to get food first.