Rudolf Hrušínský

The Czech romantic comedy hit “Love is Love” tells the story of Maruska, a blind girl and student at the Conservatory of Music who dreams of love and having a family despite her blindness. Her dream guy has curly blonde hair and blue eyes but she ends up falling in love with the dark eyed, swarthy Marek. Maruska lives with her overly protective grandfather whom is preocupied with his long-lost love. Maruska’s neighbor and best friend is constantly struggling with his headstrong mother as she refuses to accept that her son is gay. She blames everyone else - even her husband - for her son's "deviation." The fate of all main characters is unexpectedly intertwined and told through humorous and touching situations laced with subtle irony and hyperbole. Just as in life, with its funny situations and difficult tests, unexpected revelations and surprising twists, all characters will experience times when they behave blindly and forget to listen to their hearts.

Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The fleet of Polish tanks which arrive to liberate their neighbor, ostensibly threatened by a counter-revolution, includes the old tank nicknamed Ladybird, which is the last to leave the barracks.

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.

"I'm feeling like a dog, doctor". Mr. Ota Posta is not feeling very well lately, deprived and humiliated like a dog he turns into one.

As the name suggests, the movie is about football. It is not about big league soccer, making huge money. It is about football, which lives just from village fans enthusiasm, from the enthusiasm of fathers and their sons and club officials. And yet on this battlefield, where the pub and silent household alternates, it is often about everything: friends, family, the meaning of life. It is about playing fair, but also about fighting below the belt. It is about winning, but also about falling into the abyss of the league wilderness.

A career woman's struggle and fight against a male dominated society.

Thirteen-year-old Julia leaves Berlin, where she resides with her father, to spend vacation in the Czech Republic. While there she experiences first love, and also tries to help the local kids rescue a circus bear from a rich German hunter who's willing to pay for a bit of sport. If the parents get their way they'll use Mr. Big Game to finance the circus and even contribute to local pensions. The children and the bear head for the forest.

Prince Victor looks in vain for a swan which was wounded by one of his servants. Instead he discovers a beautiful girl with golden hair who has an arrow in her shoulder. She is dumb and can't explain her origin. He falls immediately for her. The girl quickly recovers, but disappears mysteriously.

It is a film consisting of six short stories, which mostly tell in a black humorous, ironic, often bitterly bitter form about an ancient curse, human infidelity, strange deviations, an unexpected miracle and hypocritical forgiveness. They have their own pointed structure, specific atmosphere and way of processing, and yet they pass on motives to each other that communicate with each other and observe the same things from different angles.

This production of Ostrava TV Studios was inspired by actual events which occurred in the Ostrava region of Moravia during the 1920s and 1930s. A hedonistic bon vivant of a lawyer named Zajícek (played by Václav Postránecký) came up with a sophisticated finance speculation scheme which exceeded the bounds of law. When discovered it became one of the most closely-followed First Republic scandals.

An evil witch is trying to steal a magic purse possessed by the local ruler. Thanks to Princess Blanka's love, Prince Petr wins out over the witch.

Life of Czechoslovak soldiers in a military unit for the so called "politically unreliable" - the Technical auxiliary battalions, aka "the black barons". Although it might seem like a political satire and it's mostly funny, it shows the reality and the absurdity of military service under the communist regime. Based on a novel by Miloslav Svandrlik.

Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most famous of these was A Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Some things these compositions share in common is their setting among the poor and criminal classes, and the roguish character Macheath. This production is based on an adaptation of Gay's original by Vaclav Havel the freedom-fighter, writer and philosopher who became the first (and only) president of the united post-communist country of Czechoslovakia, and it retains many traces of its theatrical origins. Film reviewers were not too tolerant of what they called "slavish adherence" to the noted Czech writer's stage production, but theater, philosophy and history buffs may feel otherwise.

Life in communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s and the punishments for going against the state.

In the mid-eighties, screenwriter and director Jaroslav Balík tried to give voice to the problems of an ambitious young woman who decides to get back to work after a few years spent on maternity leave. NFA.CZ

The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a mentally retarded young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.

A movie directed by Zbynek Brynych.

This movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.

Czechoslovak comedy film directed by Ladislav Smoljak, about the fictional national hero Jára Cimrman (universal genius, inventor, sportsman, criminalist, poet, writer and philosopher).

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.