Bohumil Hrabal

Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the inter-war period. Jan Dítě, a young and clever waiter who wants to become a millionaire, comes to the conclusion that to achieve his ambitious goal he must be diligent, listen and observe as much as he can, be always discreet and use what he learns to his own advantage; but the turbulent tides of history will continually stand in his way.

An episodic film about the inhabitants of Kersko, their hardships and their joys, most prominently hunting. A lyrical and humorous adaptation of writings by Bohumil Hrabal.

Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.

In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.

An elderly paper-crusher branded a fool in Prague secretly stashes condemned books, preserving their contents and extrapolating from them eccentric scenarios of wit.

Prompted by a seminar given by acclaimed German filmmaker Peter Nestler, Prague, March '92 combines 16mm footage shot over the course of a week in the title city with excerpts from Bohumil Hrabal's essay "The Magic Flute," which considers the 20th anniversary demonstrations in Prague to commemorate the death of Jan Palach, who immolated himself in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion.

A commemorative and essayistic meditative piece on the Prague quarter Libeň during the 1950s.