The Emperor and the Drummer

This sharp Czech soda first appeared on Czech Television screens on June 4, 1993, and for four years it fundamentally changed the concept of Czech television satire and pushed the boundaries of viewer tolerance into completely unprecedented, uncomfortable zones. The feature film summarized the most vivid episodes of the show and still feels like an uncompromising, comprehensive punch to the solar plexus.

Inspired by the activities of counter-intelligence officers, Jan Prokop plays chess at every opportunity. In addition, he works with his team to uncover a resident network that attempts to recruit domestic experts to work abroad.

Children from the village Bystrá are awaiting a nice and thrilling weekend. On Saturday they will play the championship football match with the nonresident boys from the village Skuhrov, on Sunday there will be the funfair with merry-go-round, swings and stalls with dainties. The members of the family of the merry-go-round man are brother and sister Janek and Zaneta Mareks whom the children have known since the last year. At that time Zaneta made friends with girls and Janek, an excellent football player, has been a welcome support of the football club.

Czech Television's epic historical film draws on the breathtaking dramatic life of the great of Czech history, King Charles IV.

Two inseparable friends, Vyžilý and Boudník, a village self-made talent and a not-so-successful professional theatre actor, want to make a living as entertainers. But they are running up against both the ceiling of their abilities and the disfavour of the approval authorities. The normalization era of the 70s and 80s does not favour anything distinctive and both heroes repeatedly experience setbacks. Although the story of a lost generation was planned at the end of the former regime, it was not released until 1990.

Several of the works of writer Bohumil Říha have been filmed. This novel by the pro-regime writer also inspired a children’s film, which was directed in 1981 by the experienced family filmmaker Václav Gajer. The story takes place in 1947 and it is based on the popular model of the relationship between a human hero and an indomitable animal protagonist. The tale of the freedom necessary for life, is, of course, beholden to the standards of the time: the Hucul horse that heals an old villager, has remained in the small village in Šumava after the Soviet soldiers have left. This is a pleasing movie that engages with the acting performance of Zdeněk Řehoř and the depiction of the indisputable beauty of the Šumava landscape as shot by cameraman Jan Němeček.

The psychological story begins innocently enough with a meeting between two young people in the basement of a suburban house. A flirtatious and bored girl, who is not particularly selective about her lovers, provokes an unpredictable reaction in her partner with her unexpected rejection. Not only does the boy rape the girl, but, fearing discovery, he kills her. All this is witnessed by a little boy wandering through the holiday-empty house, who thus becomes an inconvenient and dangerous witness for the murderer. The psychological and later physical "battle" between these two unequal opponents, who are not really opponents at all, culminates in a story of guilt and punishment, and at the same time of a special friendship and loyalty.

Bohouš Burda, a forty-year-old idealist disillusioned with city life and his failing marriage, abandons it all to run a mobile dental clinic in the mountains. He meets Terezka, who shares his yearning for a simpler existence, but even in remote nature they must confront unforeseen challenges.

In May 1945, Czech revolutionaries used several armoured trains in the fighting - partly captured, partly assembled from whatever the railway brought. One of them was commanded by the shunter Jan Chýň, who managed to bring weapons from the ammunition depot in Libčice to help the fighting in Prague.

The year is 1936, the nervous atmosphere of the Nazi threat penetrates into the sport. Upgrade boxe Vilda Jakub will compete with German Kurt Schaller. The Nazis decisions are used in order to win his master even the dirtiest means. Vilda inspect their game and focus on the preparation of environmental events. The story culminates in the victory of one of the two lovers, between which Vilda tense moments in the decision.

Civil engineer Luděk Turna accepts an attractive offer from a Prague design office. He tries to get ahead even at the cost of deception, but he recovers in time and voluntarily leaves to build a motorway...

The idea of mystery unites the three debut stories - the original Bermuda Triangle with its mysterious phenomena has begun to shift and can be traced anywhere in the world, including Czech and Slovak territory. Here, too, unexplained shifts in space and time occur. This idea is supported by the aforementioned short stories, but the inventiveness of the subject matter and staging is very heavy-handed, and the film passed through the cinemas without much interest.

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.

The protagonist is the ordinary and still blameless Evžen Macík, who one day, while waiting for his lover Maria, witnesses a robbery of a savings bank. When the robber drops a briefcase with half a million in loot, the loot falls in front of Evžen, who can't resist, picks it up and disappears. He knows that someone might have seen him at the scene of the crime, so he turns himself in as a witness to Captain Richter, who is investigating the case. Shortly thereafter, however, Maciek is contacted by the robber, who begins to force him to hand over the money with constant threats, initially only by telephone. In addition to pressure from the robber, pressure from the police is added because Captain Richter correctly suspects that Macík is hiding something from him. The mounting pressure leads to Eugene starting to make mistakes.

A dedicated biologist, Dr. Petr Gabriel accidentally kills a child in a hit-and-run and, fearing the ruin of his career, hides the body and shifts blame onto two intruders. His new acquaintance Olga and investigator Major Válek grow suspicious as Petr’s fabricated evidence unravels, plunging him into increasingly desperate mistakes.