Jozef Ort-Šnep

Showing his own original footage of Prague Spring, director Evald Schorm describes the atmosphere these days in 1968.

Старый холостяк Пишта работает на железнодорожной почте. Низкий, полный и очень несчастный, он совершенно одинок и не интересен никому из окружающих. Свои комплексы и постоянные безуспешные попытки найти подругу Пишта лечит алкоголем и мечтами о любовных приключениях. Больше всего на свете он желает полноценных отношений и немного достоинства. Пишта завидует своей знакомой паре - Винцо и Вере. Веру Пишта очень желает, а собутыльник Винцо для Пишты является недосягаемым идеалом деревенского Казановы, в которого влюблена Вера. Эти три персонажа образуют треугольник, вокруг которого выстроено действие.

Польша, 1943. Богатый польский крестьянин Леон находит в лесу обессилевшую женщину. Ее зовут Роза. Она — еврейка, которая спасается от нацистов. Леон дает Розе убежище и оказывает помощь. Но их вынужденное сосуществование кончается катастрофой, так как характеры женщины из буржуазной среды и простого крестьянина оказываются несовместимыми.

Documentary about old age.

The Homolka family celebrates a great occasion: they were finally able to buy a car. They immediately begin to drive for small trips to Hradcany, to the airport, and plan further trips. Their euphoria is spoiled by a letter from their great-grandmother. Their great-grandfather is dying and the family is expected to come along to say goodbye. The annoyed Homolkas therefore set off to the South Bohemian village where the grandparents live.

This light comedy finds a Czech taxi driver taking his family on a weekend outing in the country. His wife, daughter-in-law, son and two grandchildren are the passengers who disturb the solitude of two young lovers. While the women attend the horse races, the father sits home getting drunk and watching football. The overweight daughter-in-law is upset because she has blown her chances to become a ballerina. All members of the family are caught up in their own individual problems in this realistically portrayed family comedy

An artist's studio is descended upon by a group of retired men and a young mother who agree to model in the nude for money. Comedy ensues as the students and the local bureaucracy react to the models, all in need of extra money. Several running gags border on slapstick as the officials and the students don't know what to do with the nude models.

Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist Ludvik Svoboda was elected. Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.

Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.

On a sunny afternoon an old man speaks to a laundress about his love for Provence, then a black flag is unfurled outside the town monument: news has arrived over the radio that the famous composer Foerster, born in the town, has just died.