Writing
A film impression about Bohumil Hrabal - an encounter with the man and his literary work. The film was shot in places well known and close to the writer: in Prague and small Czech towns. In addition to Hrabal, it features director Jirzi Menzel, who talks about his collaboration with the writer.
No description available.
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.
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
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.
The discovery of previously unknown recordings of Hrabal's lectures provides a rare, intimate insight into the author's world. The documentary film The Gentle Hrabal allows his authentic voice to be heard again after almost fifty years. Here, Hrabal speaks to students at his cottage in Kersko, and at other times to parishioners at the Protestant rectory in Libice.
An elderly paper-crusher branded a fool in Prague secretly stashes condemned books, preserving their contents and extrapolating from them eccentric scenarios of wit.
Juraj Herz adapts Bohumil Hrabal's story about a man who works in a junk shop.
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
An episodic film about the inhabitants of Kersko, their hardships and their joys, most prominently hunting. A lyrical and humorous adaptation of writings by Bohumil Hrabal.
Charming, witty and smart men represent a fictitious insurance company who soon fall for an innocent-looking young woman smarter than she seems.
A commemorative and essayistic meditative piece on the Prague quarter Libeň during the 1950s.
A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle races results in drunkenness, long-winded discussions, and death; two elderly men create false biographies; insurance agents visit an eccentric painter/goat farmer and his mother; guests at a wedding reception remain oblivious to outlying misery; and a working-class boy romances a Roma girl.
Prompted by a seminar given by acclaimed German filmmaker Peter Nestler, Prague, March '92 combines 16mm footage shot over the course of a week in the title city with excerpts from Bohumil Hrabal's essay "The Magic Flute," which considers the 20th anniversary demonstrations in Prague to commemorate the death of Jan Palach, who immolated himself in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion.
Young people meet Bohumil Hrabal, who talks about anything but himself.
Several parties—a prostitute, aging football players, working girls, two men playing pool, and a hedonistic young man—each coalesce in a tavern.
Speaking to a group of sunbathing women who remind him of lovers past, an elderly man unburdens himself of a lifetime’s worth of stories.
