Emma Černá

Set in Czechoslovakia, the drama follows the lives of its characters against the backdrop of real historical events that shape their personal stories. To evoke period atmosphere, the series intersperses authentic clips from vintage Czechoslovak film newsreels, using their original commentaries or newly recorded historical voice-overs by Vladimír Fišer. A narrator, initially voiced by Vojtěch Kotek and later by Matěj Hádek, provides continuity and reflection, guiding viewers through changing times. Under the guidance of screenwriter Rudolf Merkner, each episode’s script weaves family and individual dramas into key moments of Czech and Slovak history: political shifts, cultural trends, and social transformations from the 1960s onward.

No description available.

Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world.

Series about the life of Renaissance anatomist, scholar and politic Johannes Jessenius. Already legendary series today, was produced by Czechoslovak Television Bratislava, directed by Slovak director Miroslav Luther in the first half of 80's in Barrandov Studios in Prague. The story and screenplay of the series wrote Czech writer Vladimír Körner. Five-episodes epic historical narration is a biographical story of distinguished Renaissance scholar, anatomist and politic of Slovak origin, Johannes Jessenius (Ján Jesenský, 1566–1621). It displays his life from the first studies and successes. In 1594 he became professor of surgery and anatomy on Wittenberg University, which he had attended years before. From that moment, his life went through social and personal wins and losses, to the sad end on the Prague Old Town Square gallows, among 27 noblemen, knights and burgenses, after lose Bohemian Revolt in 1621. His destiny was coupled with key events of Czech history in the break of 16th and 17th century, when Renaissance and European humanism slowly fade out.

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

The Battle of Moscow is a 1985 Soviet multi-part war narrative, presenting a dramatized account of the 1941 Battle of Moscow and the events preceding it. The battle was the first major defeat of German Wehrmacht in the Second World War.

Hana is a psychologist and a thoroughly independent woman. Her unemployed husband, jealous of his wife, finds a younger girlfriend, but their teenage son Honzik is frustrated; everyone ignores him. Hana's patient Eva, an attractive middle-aged woman, is having problems with her 25-year-old son; she is in love with her son's friend and her son is offended by her behavior. To complete the circle, he falls in love with Hana and Honzik is utterly disgusted by their affair. Another of Hana's patients is Dub, a millionaire who can have pretty much anything, or anyone, he wants. He wants Hana. But he can't have her.

No description available.

The waitress Gita from the hotel "Bobí vrch" approaches her lover who has not left his wife yet and gives him an ultimatum: if he does not do all according to her wish, she will announce to the police his machinations with foreign currency.

No description available.

This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.

A WW I veteran still haunted by his time in the trenches settles in a small town to work for the railroad company. His pretty wife attracts the attention of the lonely young gravedigger.

After their young daughter dies suddenly from a viral infection, Marie and Petr struggle to cope with the silence and emptiness left in their apartment. The couple drifts apart as Marie sinks into deep isolation while Petr attempts to distract himself through work and social interactions. Eventually, they decide to try for another child in an effort to move forward and rebuild their fractured relationship.

A remake of Vávra's 1948 atomic age thriller Krakatit. Engineer Prokop creates the devastating explosive “Krakatit” and soon confronts manipulative agents and imperialist conspiracies. Realizing his invention’s threat, he fights to prevent its misuse, risking everything to stop those who seek to exploit his epochal discovery.

At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the idea of making an abridged version of the footage for cinema, he had to not only rebuild the storyline but also dub it into Czech. However, the result was only an illustrative puzzle, describing the various stages of the hero's turbulent life.

An old man is wandering round a badly signposted and as yet mostly under construction Prague housing estate looking for the high rise block into which he is supposed to be moving with his daughter's family. The old granddad from the countryside likes chatting, nothing escapes his eyes and he wants to give everyone a helping hand.

Sixty-year-old Joska Platejz, a peculiar jack of all trades, lives in a cottage in the Giant Mountains. He cooks wonderfully for a group of woodcutters. He has brought a mountain stream to his cottage and set up a set of tanks (one of which he keeps trout in). He also has a wind turbine, a wood-burning cable car, air-conditioning in the cottage and a mannequin of a man called Albert, who scares away unknown visitors. Joska is a man who claims that it is best to be alone, yet he constantly tries not to be alone. He is friends with a gamekeeper, a teacher, he tries to get his children to visit him regularly and therefore easily succumbs to a middle-aged lady. She doesn't take long to persuade him and soon comes to his cottage. A great love seems to be born...

Sonya is the heiress to the riches of a Czech noble family—the Hajns. Petr, a social climber marries her, ignoring some shady goings-on—in particular, an insane uncle who prowls the mansion believing himself invisible, a peccadillo the family indulges. The uncle’s stalking every corner of the house, popping out of cupboards and out from behind curtains slowly takes its toll on the young bride.

An aging professor at a Prague neurological clinic is forced to confront his personal values and the harsh boundaries of medical science. Already burdened by the ultimate questions of life and death, his ethical convictions are put to the test by Víťa, a young patient with an inoperable tumor.