Jiří Šafář

Directed by Lubomir Benes.

One of the film stories based on the old Prague legends. This one is about the old master clock maker Hanus who construed the Prague Old Town astronomical clock. Master Hanus' clock started working for the first time in 1490 but did not tell the time for too long. Soon the master, blinded by the perfidious town councilors, stopped it for more than 200 years.

A film story based on the old Prague legends. It tells about a poor student lured by wealth, which he prefers to knowledge. In the end, he sells his soul to the evil powers. The Devil takes him to hell and since then there is a blackened hole on the ceiling of a Prague house.

"The Castle of Otranto" is animation/short/mockumentary based on "The Castle of Otranto", a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole, the first Gothic novel. The novel takes place in Otranto in southern Italy. In Jan Svankmajer's mocumentary, the amateur archaeologist Dr Vozáb has set to prove that the supernatural ghost love story takes place not in Italy but in Otranto Castle near Nachod in Czechoslovakia.

Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.

An animated lecture that totally overthrows the idea of the tender character of women and violent character of men. It proves that the reality is different.

A small, animated figure learns how to use a whip, a pair of wings and a house.

A humorous modern fairy-tale about boys who woke up a mammoth in a school biology room and experienced a lot of adventures with it. After numerous events in which they discover the worst part of their act the boys eventually find out that going to school is quite nice.

Two puppets, Punch and Judy, do battle to the death over the custody of a live guinea pig.

A satiric film that through a lecture of a cracked brain pedant describes the increasing disobedience of children. It calls us for protection against misbehaved children and wants to "defend" the world of adults from disastrous consequences of the ungrateful children's deeds. The film is remarkable for the inimitable humor of Milos Macourek.

A modern fairy-tale about Otýlie, a girl who each time she writes something gets all dirty from the ink. One day her teacher wants to clean her with an eradicator and otylie disappears. She is happy to be invisible but due to blots she becomes an ordinary girl again.

Animated story of a sad magician

Taken from Boccaccio's Decameron, this lovely puppet film tells the bawdy story of the beautiful young Venetian lady who confesses her sinful passion for the Archangel Gabriel to a lustful monk, who promptly impersonates him in her bedroom with predictable results. Amidst the film's ribaldry, the hypocrisy and false piety of the monk are mercilessly mocked.

A happy little potter is approached by a huge hand which wants him to sculpt its statue. The potter refuses, wanting nothing more than to be left alone with his only friend, a potted plant. As the hand's request gives way to bribery, demands, and threats, the potter becomes more desperate to escape its clutch, leading to tragedy.

Trnka’s sci-fi vision of the future in which machines and robots try to substitute themselves into the most beautiful human relationships. A cybernetic robot is supposed to substitute for the loving grandmother of a little girl. The wise grandmother, however, comes back and the girl finds the warmth of her grandmother’s loving arms again. Trnka’s artistic ideas in this film can be described as both poetically fragile and dramatically cautionary.

The passion for high speed can nowadays almost be seen in the new-born. The film shows that such passion, if not controlled, is self-destructing and even suicidal. At least this is the way Trnka presents it in this satiric story. —kratkyfilm.cz

Kam Cert Nemuze by director Zdenek Podskalsky is a routine farce that slowly builds up steam to some rib-tickling slapstick episodes. (Miroslav Hornicek) is a deluded young man who is convinced he is Faust incarnate. This turn of mind leads to some ludicrous situations, such as when he believes a woman is really a cat. Before he can be rounded up and interned wherever they keep people with this type of a problem, love enters his life and the clouds that obscured his vision begin to dissipate.

Czech comedy fantasy directed by Jiri Krejcik et al.

Jean-Paul is a Frenchman who yearns to live in communist Czechoslovakia. His wish is granted when, mistaken as a masseur of a French boating team, he manages to elude the democratic authorities long enough to scamper over the Czech border.

Lost Children (Czech: Ztracenci) is a Czechoslovak war film directed by Miloš Makovec. It was entered into the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

Jan Hus is a 1954 Czechoslovak film directed by Otakar Vávra. It is the first part of the "Hussite Revolutionary Trilogy", one of the most famous works of the Czechoslovak director, completed with Jan Žižka (1955) and Proti všem (Against All Odds, 1957).

Director: Vaclav Gajer

A young doctor and a group of injured are hiding in an underground shelter and are liberated by Soviet soldiers.