Václav Havel

Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.

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In-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered as famous personalities from all walks of life talk about the highs and lows in their lives.

The documentary explores the presidency of Václav Havel, a poet who unexpectedly became president. The film, starting in 1992, captures Havel’s experiences after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a significant defeat for him as he had campaigned for its continuation. Despite political opposition and accusations of responsibility for the breakup, Havel runs for president of the new Czech Republic. The film, a unique document, was Koutecký’s most important project, continued by Janek after Koutecký’s death in 2006.

Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.

With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.

A moving account, in his own words, of the personal life and work of the brilliant Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman (1932-2018): his tragic childhood, his major contribution to the cultural movement known as the Czech New Wave, his exile in Paris, his troubled days in New York, his rise to stardom in Hollywood; a complete existence in the service of cinema.

A fictionalized autobiographical play written by Czechoslovakian playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel in 1984 upon his release from a four-and-one-half-year prison term for political subversion. The play focuses on two days in the life of a dissident writer who is awaiting the knock at the door that may send him to prison.

Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most famous of these was A Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Some things these compositions share in common is their setting among the poor and criminal classes, and the roguish character Macheath. This production is based on an adaptation of Gay's original by Vaclav Havel the freedom-fighter, writer and philosopher who became the first (and only) president of the united post-communist country of Czechoslovakia, and it retains many traces of its theatrical origins. Film reviewers were not too tolerant of what they called "slavish adherence" to the noted Czech writer's stage production, but theater, philosophy and history buffs may feel otherwise.

From the behavior, discourse, and appearance of individual actors, Vachek composes, in the form of a mosaic, a broad and many-layered film-argument about Czechoslovak democracy in the period of its rebirth, all administered with the director’s ini­mitable point of view.

A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.

The film Mečiar is the confession of the young director Tereza Nvotová about Vladimír Mečiar and the influence that this politician had on Slovak society, but also on the life of Tereza herself. When the totalitarian communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Tereza was one year old. The leaders of the Gentle Revolution then decided to hold an audition for the Minister of the Interior, to which Vladimír Mečiar, an unknown business lawyer from the Slovak countryside at the time, applied. After success in bankruptcy, Vladimír Mečiar reaches the political top, from where he rules the country with a series of questionable practices. Against the background of events such as the division of Czechoslovakia or the kidnapping of the son of the president of the Slovak Republic, Tereza and her peers relive their childhood.

Inspired by the idea that the greatest gift one generation can give to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, 'Wisdom' seeks to create a record of a group of people over the age of 65 who have all made their mark on the world.

Documentary about the film academy in Prague and the Czech Film in 1965.

Meet The Plastic People of the Universe, the avant-garde, jazz-rock, Sun Ra meets Velvet Underground, Czech revolutionaries. A tribute to the band that against all odds used the power of their music to help topple their oppressive government.

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A bitter sweet comedy that follows a highly appointed Chancellor who set to step down from his position after years of service to his country. With just two last days left to enjoy his palatial villa before he is finally evicted, his situation gradually goes from bad to worse.

Jurácek's feature debut is shot in two parts. In the first, a corporal accompanies a new recruit with a sore Achilles tendon for his physical, and all the girls or young women they see are played by the same actress (Ruzickova). In the longer second segment, shot with the help of the Czechoslovakia army, the soldiers pass the time during basic training and maneuvers by talking about girls.

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.

A bitter comedic-drama centering around Tomas, a former promising young director who must cope with a commerce driven world he no longer wants to participate in.