
Jaromír Kallista
Production
Biography
Jaromír Kallista was born on December 18, 1939 in Prague. As a production graduate of Prague Film Academy (1959-1964), he worked at Barrandov Studios until 1970, when he decided to operate outside the state system as an independent film-maker. In this period he worked on the production unit for a number of feature films by Evald Schorm and Antonín Máša, as well as several documentaries. From 1973 to 1988 he was head of production at the Laterna Magica. Since 1989 he has taught at FAMU (Prague Film Academy). In 1983, together with Jan Švankmajer, he formed an independent film production company that, in 1992, became a legal entity with the creation of ATHANOR Ltd.
Known For

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.
Lunacy

No description available.
Ohne Kampf kein Sieg

A quiet young English girl named Alice finds herself in an alternate version of her own reality after chasing a white rabbit. She becomes surrounded by living inanimate objects and stuffed dead animals, and must find a way out of this nightmare - no matter how twisted or odd that way must be.
Alice

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.
Faust

When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real.
Little Otik

Six Prague residents pursue bizarre rituals. Mr. Peony builds a chicken costume to wear while enacting homicidal fantasies toward neighbor Mrs. Loubalova, who does the same dressed as a dominatrix. Their mail carrier, Mrs. Malkova, inhales tiny balls of bread. Newsstand operator Mr. Kula obsessively watches the broadcasts of news anchor Mrs. Beltinska, whose husband regularly scrubs his body.
Conspirators of Pleasure

According to one Beskydy Mountains legend, if you do a good deed you will see silver trees. Little Ondra knows trees like that. In his family's cottage hangs a picture showing silver firs, a person falling from a height and a watch. In art lessons Ondra paints trees of the same kind. - One day Lojzek Hojgr, a man who climbs fir trees to gather the seeds, comes to see Ondra's parents. Long-ago Ondra's father has had such a job and Lojzek is his long-time friend. Hojgr moves into a half-ruined wood cabin. Ondra's father takes him on a visit to Lojzek and both demonstrate the beautiful but dangerous work of seed-gathering to the boy.
The Legend of the Silver Fir

The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly subject to the voice of others.
Ceiling

A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius, lonely and looking for a night's diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde. In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In "The Last Golem," a young rabbi struggles to fashion a massive, silent giant out of living clay — until he's distracted by a mute servant girl. In the second episode, "Bread Slippers," an 18th-century countess indulges her passion for sweet cakes, adulterous affairs, and secret kisses with pretty maids until a mysterious visitor whisks her away to an abandoned mansion, where Fate has a different kind of dance in store for her. And in the final story, "Poisoned Poisoner," a ravishing murderess in the Middle Ages dispatches lecherous merchants to the tune of upbeat '60s Czech pop songs.
Prague Nights
A simple print worker selflessly cares for his sick mother. He spends all his free time with her and the only hobby he indulges in from time to time is model railways. But the arrival of a beautiful girl changes everything. The hero suddenly falls into a love infatuation, not knowing how to cope with the conflict of his unrecognised feelings and his concern for his mother...
Klec pro dva
No description available.
Rodeo

Examines the human relationship with food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Food

A verger, who likes to dress as a priest, is invited, by one of the villagers, to be the pastor at a vacant church. The atheist teacher resents the pastor, and tries to embarrass him in various ways, including being caught with the local girl, Majka.
The End of a Priest

Oldrich is the runt of his village, beaten by his father, bullied by the other boys. But he has imagination on his side, and a wiry toughness they can’t defeat. The village is in turmoil, because the Nazi occupiers have just retreated and the Red Army is advancing. Oldrich dodges amid the mayhem and panic, taking his share of blows but always managing to stay one step ahead.
Long Live the Republic

A look at the legendary Czech sound designer and his profession. Editor and documentary filmmaker Adéla Špaljová has her father Ivo Špalj talk about his life, career, and working methods. Over the course of his long life, sound designer Ivo Špalj (*1940) has collaborated on hundreds of films and become a mentor for at least one generation of men and women behind the mixing board. This gentle documentary also shows “Engi” (as he is known to his colleagues) again working with Jan Švankmajer, whose films he has lent their typical, dense, and sophisticated sound mix.
Engi – Sound Designer Ivo Špalj
Documentary about Barrandov studios.
Kouzelný kopec

Eugene, an aging man, leads a double life - one real, the other in his dreams. He goes to see a psychoanalyst, who tries to interpret the meaning of his dreams. Eugene finds a way of entering his dream-world at will and finds out about his childhood and what really happened to his parents.
Surviving Life (Theory and Practice)

The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s clear: this amateur theatre company has a long way to go before they can perform their version of "The Insect Play", a famous satirical work from 1922 by the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek which features insects with decidedly human traits: greed, egocentrism, jealousy.
Insect

Two pieces of meat fall in love.
Meat Love

A troupe of young women on post-apocalyptic earth are lead around by a mistress born before the war, eventually stumbling into the company of a lonely old man.