Jan Vostrčil

The firemen of a provincial Czechoslovakian town throw a ball in honor of the old chief's retirement. There will be music and dancing, a beauty pageant and a raffle. The whole town will be in attendance. However, the proceedings are dogged by difficulty at every step. Workplace injuries, stolen prizes, a shortage of pretty girls... and fire.

Andula, an innocent Czech girl from a factory town, is desperately in search of love. She believes she's found it when she beds Milda, a charming young musician visiting from Prague. Milda, however, is only looking for a casual encounter, and leaves town assuming he'll never see Andula again. But when Andula doesn't hear from him, she packs up and heads to Prague, to the surprise of Milda and his parents.

Two closely related episodes. Youths make problems for two local orchestras about to compete nationally, and in a talent competition a young girl gets stage fright, while another lies to her boss to compete.

A comedy about two bumbling policemen investigating an alleged rape in a small Czech town. One of the alleged rapists is supposed to get married the day he's locked up.

A few days in the life of a Czechoslovak teenager when he starts work.

Two classically trained musicians and childhood friends - one a successful cellist in Prague, the other a violinist who makes his money playing provincial funerals - reconvene on the eve of a small-town symphony concert.

The heroine of the story is a teenage Jitka Pažoutová, suffering from her fatness and clumsiness. For her, the real torture is especially the gym classes led by a sympathetic gym teacher, nicknamed Bohoušek by the girls. A change for the better is a dodgeball match, which the girls win thanks to Jitka's "guns", which simply cannot be caught. At the tournament, Jitka meets Honza Koubek - a boy who insults her, but then apologizes to her and persuades her to try using her strength in the shot put...

In the aftermath of World War II, a soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family and falls in love with the daughter, now a maid. Their relationship forces him to confront the tension between his love and his conscience.

Three friends - Tomás, Hubert and Jozka - are boys growing up in a little town. Tomás lives with his aunt Apolena and uncle Václav. Tomás is a boy with lots of ideas that often end up getting him into trouble not only with his teachers and aunt, but with the other inhabitants of the town as well. He has a crush on his schoolmate Blanka and for her sake he decides to try to get the prize for the best pupil in the school.

A day in the life of Arnošt, a soldier staying in Josefov. A sense of desperation permeates the environment as well as the mind of the protagonist. It is sunday, and saturday left just a hangover. Days go by, nothing changes. A metaphor for the political situation in the Czech lands at a time where depicting a soldier as a drunk was considered out of place to say the least.

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.

A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into music instruments. Great mystery is immediately found by TV station. And soon the military base becomes a stage for huge TV show.

This wacky musical comedy builds on absurd ideas, parodic humour and many variously subverted references to famous...

A psychological film about the sense of self-fulfillment of a divorced couple over 30 who feel that life is slipping through their fingers. While she, a nurse by profession, is adapting better, he, unreliable and always improvising, is searching in vain for his clue and even tries to get back to his ex-wife.

Who wouldn't want to return to the limelight? Years ago, actress Slávka Hradilová was a movie star. Today, she is approaching 60 and the most she does is appear in commercials. But she still keeps in shape. She regularly meets with friends to help them solve their problems, enjoys her teenage granddaughter, but above all she longs to get a big role in front of the movie camera again. When one day she gets an offer with a script in hand, she beams and heads to the studios where she was once almost a queen. But it turns out that times have changed, and today's directors want something different from actors than routine gestures and flashy facial expressions. So the former star is in for a profound disappointment...

On one Sunday, when a scrap metal collection is announced, the children find a strange wire puzzle that grants every wish. Soon the town where the children live and go to school is in turmoil. But selfish adults, eager to investigate the mystery, destroy the spell...

At the beginning of normalisation in the 1970s, the appearance of ideologically tinged stories intensified, but there were also attempts to create unpretentious entertainment, cut almost according to First Republic models. This film develops the confusion surrounding the preparations for the celebration of a golden wedding between a retired miner and his wife... Director Jaroslav Mach relies on situational comedy stemming from misunderstandings and confusions, as well as verbal banter, based on the constant banter between the celebrants.