Czech It Out: Award-Winning Czech Films at SFPLLike this list

14 items

• Lásky jedné plavovlásky

  Loves of a blond

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  Poignant, stylish, and painfully funny, this early film by director Milos Forman uses non-actors and documentary style photography to depict the romantic dreams and disappointments of the story’s rural teenage heroine. A masterpiece of the Czech New…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The shop on Main Street

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  This dramatic, Oscar-winning film revolves around Tony, a poor Slovakian carpenter. When Tony is unexpectedly appointed the Aryan minder of an elderly Jewish widow, he struggles with his conscience and with his neighbors’ cynical embrace of fascism.

• Ostře sledované vlaky

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  One of the greatest Czech films ever made, Closely Watched Trains recounts a young train dispatcher’s sexual awakening during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. This slyly subversive movie won the 1968 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

• Alice

  & Darkness Light Darkness

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  Czech animation master Jan Swankmajer presents a dark, surrealistic interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, in which Alice follows a demonic rabbit through a decaying landscape littered with broken, discarded objects and nightmarish…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Marketa Lazarová

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  Surrealistic, expressionistic, chaotic, and compelling, this stunningly photographed film portrays the violent feuding of medieval Czech and German tribes with documentary-like immediacy.

• Perliky na dn

  Pearls of the deep

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  This anthology of short films presents five brilliant, stylistically diverse features based on stories by the author Bohumil Hrabal. Irony, melancholy, and comic resolve suffuse these early gems by directors who pioneered the Czech New Wave.

• Vsichni dobri rodaci

  All my good countrymen

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  In the aftermath of World War II, seven friends jockey for power as their Moravian village abruptly transitions to Communist rule and collective farming. Opportunism supplants idealism in this film with a subtle but devastating critique of power and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Nocní hovory s matkou

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  Jan Nemec directs and stars in this eccentric meditation on his dysfunctional relationship with his deceased mother. Talking while filming through a distorting a fish-eye lens, the garrulous, charismatic director engages friends, drinking…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Kolya

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  Set in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, this charming, bittersweet film chronicles the friendship that develops between an aging, womanizing cellist, Louka, and a young Russian boy, Kolya, who unexpectedly becomes Louka’s ward. Winner of the Academy Award…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Sedmikrásky

  Daisies

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  2 Classic Czech Films: “Daisies” and “Report on the Party and Guests.” 1. Daisies. Banned upon its release in 1966, director Chytilova’s daring, anarchic film follows the adventures of two teenage girls who cheerfully reject all notions of propriety…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Valerie and her week of wonders

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  When a young woman named Valerie loses herself in erotic daydreams, a stream of gorgeous, surrealistic imagery floods the jumbled scenes of this vampire-infused fairy tale for adults.

• La planète sauvage

  Fantastic planet

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  This stunningly beautiful and surrealistic animated film presents a race of enslaved aliens, the Oms, who revolt against their giant blue alien masters, the Traags. Fantastic Planet was a unique Czech-French coproduction.

• Rozmarné léto

  Capricious summer

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  2 Classic Czech Films: “Capricious Summer” and “The Joke.” 1. Capricious Summer. Director Jiri Menzel stars in this gentle comedy about three friends—a bathhouse owner, a retired major, and a literature-loving priest—whose summer doldrums end with…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Private century

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  This captivating documentary tells the stories of ordinary Czech families through the medium of their home movies. The film’s brilliant montage and ironic off-screen narration illuminate the personal and political significance of deceptively…Read moreRead more of this annotation