by the same director, featuring those few fringe theater troupes (Sklep, Křeč, Mimoza, Kolotoč, Vpřed)...
but then again i also found fux pretty amusing too (as well as satansbraten) and yeah sherlock is quite the trope in DE & CZ....will keep my eyes peeled for more.....(jiri, any more czech ones?)Lencho of the Apes wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 7:25 pm "Sherlock Holmes" was a real narrative trope, wasn't it -- for 1937-poll I watched a German movie about someone impersonating Holmes for fun and profit, and yesterday a Czech silent -- 1923 -- called The Kidnapping Of Fux, The Banker, tat likewise had a Sherlock Holmes trying to track down a neurodivergent person who thought he himself was Holmes.
The Desire of Sherlock Holmes (Štěpán Skalský, 1972)
The Unforgettable Poster (Karel Dodal, Irena Dodalová, 1937) #CoMoCzIn 1927 the Town's Theatre in Královské Vinohrady introduced a new patent of Mr. Mareš - downthrow of frames. This technical innovation concerning stages is shown in several versions/combinations.
A billposter pastes up new posters advertising film performances. One of the posters displays Mona Lisa, another one King Bluebeard. They fall in love with each other and the king takes Mona Lisa to his castle. Mona Lisa, however, finds out in the kitchen that she cannot prepare any food - there is no fat. In the meantime, eggs, coconut oil and milk rush to a nearby factory where they turn into cubes of the margarine Sana and help Mona Lisa bake a sweet-smelling marble cake and chicken. The king is satisfied. As they finish their meal, they return onto their posters, but this time there is a poster promoting Sana margarine hanging between them. The king rewards Mona Lisa with a royal crown, but she puts it directly on the Sana margarine. The billposter returns and is surprised that the cube of Sana has already received the well-deserved crown.
Rozruch, a male nurse at St James Hospital, receives a set of dentures from the health insurance company instead of the curative mud he expected. When he goes to the insurance company to sort out the mix-up, the clerks are not at all helpful.
Councillor Pěna comes to the insurance company to arrange a daytrip with his lover, Věra the secretary, whom he wants to marry once his daughter Heda marries. Pěna announces that the senior consultant of St James Hospital, Mr Marek, will also be visiting and although he does not know him personally he asks that his wish be satisfied. When the angry Rozruch reveals a moment later that he is from St James Hospital, the clerks assume he is Marek and their behaviour instantly changes. Chief physician Bruner prescribes a stay at a spa and even drives him there personally the next day. The real Marek then arives at the spa with Heda to whom he had introduced himself as Rozruch to demonstrate the selflessness of her feelings. Pěna and Věra arrive too, unaware that Věra's mother is also there. In the small spa town everybody eventually meets and their secrets are exposed. After returning to Prague, Rozruch graduates, having secretly completed his studies of medicine, and Bruner gives him a job at the health insurance company.
The last film made by the director Karel Lamač shortly before he emigrated from a country threatened by the Nazis was a doppelganger comedy with Vlasta Burian in the lead role. In the film, the popular comic plays Kryštof Rozruch, a hospital attendant who is provided with a sojourn in a health spa from the hospital insurance firm after being mistaken for his superior, the consultant Doctor Marek. In the spa town of Rochov, he meets with the real Doctor Marek, who is actually pretending to be Rozruch in front of his girlfriend Heda so that he can test the strength of her selfless love…
The ballad about delirium tremens that Rozruch uses to regale the drunk Doctor Brener (Jaroslav Marvan), was written especially for the film by the playwright Jiří Verner.
This comedy of errors provided Burian and his colleagues with plenty of opportunity for improvisation.
On 22 March 1968 President Antonín Novotný gave in to the pressure of the reformist communists headed by Alexander Dubček and resigned. It is necessary to elect a new head of state who has set out on the path of „socialism with a human face“. Karel Vachek with his crew encroaches behind the scenes of the then political goings-on, films fiery speeches, stormy meetings, tactical deliberations and run-of-the-mill tittle tattle of our leaders. His film is an enormously candid artistic reportage in the style of „cinema direct“, as well as a gentle parody of the investigative, politically committed film documentary. Able to stand back he follows characters big and small reminding us more of a comedy whose humour and irony though remains full of hope.
Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist [at the height of his senility] Ludvik Svoboda was elected.
Starring: General Ludvík Svoboda, Prime Minister Oldřich Černík, General Secretary of the Communist Party Alexander Dubček, Chairman of the National Assembly Josef Smrkovský, economist Ota Šik, men of letters Jan Procházka, Pavel Kohout, Jan Skácel, Karel Ptáčník, Milan Jariš, Jan Otčenášek, politicians Josef Špaček, Gustav Husák, Marie Švermová, Miroslav Galuška, Drahomír Kolder, Čestmír Císař, Ludvík Černý, Bohuslav Laštovička, Jozef Lenárt, Zdeněk Fierlinger, Marie Miková, Josef Borůvka, Josef Plojhar, Karel Poláček, Vasil Bil´ak, Jan Pillar, Julius Dolanský, Joří Hendrych, Martin Vaculík and scientists Radoslav Selucký, Karel Kosík and Eduard Goldstücker.
Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.
Film director Drahomíra Vihanová is preparing some interviews with two women. The women are at first sight opposites, but in reality they have much in common. Through the interviews the film director hopes to get a deeper understanding of herself as well. What unite all three of them is creativity, what creativity means for women, and how they combine their creative projects with their daily life.
Doctor Alena Konecná, 40 years old, is a macromolecular chemist, working at the Sigma Plant's Research Institute. She says that a woman gets emotionally involved in her project and sticks to it, while men can leave unfinished projects and start new ones. As a researcher she has fallen in love with fluoroplastics. To find solutions give her a sense of fulfillment, of having accomplished something, which makes her happy. Anezka Zlatníková, 71 years old, works in the ticket office at Srbsko railway station in the countryside. Since her teens she has been writing thousands of poems, but never been published. Writing poems gives her a new lease of life, and makes life beautiful.
She [Anezka Zlatníková] agrees that there are links between science and art.
Chytilová ran for Senate in 2006 as a Rovnost Šancí (The Equal Chance Party) candidate. The film is a collection of monologues by female party members from across the nation.
The director’s plan was to capture the broadest possible sample of women who not only look after themselves but also have higher ambitions – to reform and administer public affairs. All in all they are members, candidates or supporters of a political party that advocates equal chances for all – men and women. They are interested in “women’s issues,” i.e. what are men’s and women’s relationships in the workplace, in society, and at home, what prospects women wanting to enter politics have, what options are available to them once they have entered the political scene, what maternity leave or career building means for young employed women, etc. Chytilová crisscrossed the whole country seeking women of varying ages, professions, and social statuses – mothers, young single women, childless women, divorced women,public servants, activists, physicians, lawyers, teachers, and so on, and gave their opinions a platform.
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strana_Ro ... 0anc%C3%AD
The Equal Chance Party (abbreviated SRŠ) was a Czech political party registered by the Ministry of the Interior on April 19, 2005.
Its main goal was to promote the full equality of women in society.
In the parliamentary elections in 2006, the party received 10,879 votes, or 0.20%
In the senate elections, Věra Chytilová ran for the party in Prague 2. She received 1,562 votes (4.55%)
In September 2007, the Minister of the Interior, based on the opinion of the control committee of the Chamber of Deputies, proposed to the Supreme Administrative Court the suspension of the activities of The Equal Chance Party. The reason was the alleged failure to fulfill the obligation given by law to submit the annual financial report for the previous year. The party's activities were suspended on January 22, 2008, by a decision of the Supreme Administrative Court, the decision became final on January 31, 2008.
sure! here we go...
Karel Vachek's 196-minute documentary novel depicts the nearly six months leading up to the first free election in post-Velvet Revolution Czechoslovakia.
Twenty years on, Vachek tapped into his Elective Affinities to capture the period before the first democratic elections of 1990 – a time of euphoria, uncertainty and bizarre events, when chaos gave rise to a new political order.
Personalities from Czech political and cultural life star in performances pieced together into a new relation to the grotesque theater of the world.
The director is preoccupied with the abundance of goings on in the various social events, political ceremonies, and populist shows, where he is interested in every seemingly unimportant movement or subtle gesture, which transform the film into a diaphragm lens between the apparent and the concealed.
Vachek’s film is also a reflection on the theme of utopia and its contradictions.
This is just the first film in Vachek’s four-part series “Petty Capitalist”.
