Jaromil Jireš

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Television series Golden Sixties examines new insights into Czech and Slovak cinema of the 1960s and the role of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Each episode focuses on a different filmmaker.

Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.

The dramatic story of Karel Svozil, an aging professor of art history, tells of love and old age, illness, death and the worries of everyday life with a humorous touch. A diagnosis of a cancerous tumour unexpectedly interferes with the life of the wise and sophisticated man and his love affair with the much younger Alena, leading him to contemplate suicide. However, the gloomy thoughts are soon replaced by feverish activity, with which Professor Svozil tries to make the most of his remaining time. He finishes his book, marries his mistress, and openly speaks out against his superior. However, an accident radically changes the whole situation.

An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel.

In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.

A special story about love, dance, and immortality takes place in the late 1940s. A young man, dance master Mayer, arrives at a pulmonary sanatorium. His diagnosis is serious—tuberculosis. However, he does not give in to his illness and begins to actively fight it with dance and optimism. Gradually, he wins over other patients who had previously resigned themselves to their fate. Soon, however, his illness breaks out in full force and insidiousness. Facing death, he embodies human courage and a positive attitude towards life.

An intimate psychological film which elaborates the Faustian theme about the dispute between the body and the soul - a study on human identity. Two young doctors carry out the surgical exchange of the brains of two women who are dying after a car accident - a young girl and member of a criminal gang, and a lonely seventy-year-old associate professor of oriental studies. The young girl wakes from the operation thinking like the elderly intellectual and tries in vain to live with her new identity. (https://www.filmovyprehled.cz/en/film/22344/double-role)

A lyrical story from the beginning of 20th century, with the atmosphere of a small-town environment, distinctive characters, and a subtle analysis of human nature. It takes place in a small town in southern Bohemia, where a perceptive adolescent boy experiences his first emotional enchantment and a deep crisis. Helimadoe are also the initial letters of the names of the five distinctive daughters of Hanzelín, a rough country doctor who not only treats a seriously ill boy, but also helps him overcome his painful emotional turmoil with his wisdom.

A model Communist village is visited by a flying saucer.

Adaptation of Vladimir Paral's comic novel, which criticizes consumerism as an attitude of life.

Good-looking Edita Beningerová (Jana Brejchová) arrives at a chemical factory in the North Bohemian town of Ústí nad Labem together with her young assistant Nada (Zlata Adamovská). She is hoping that her ex-husband, outstanding practical chemical engineer Vik Panc (Eduard Cupák), will help her conduct an experiment to validate her proposed theoretical method of isolating cholesterol from lanolin. The success of Edita's invention is crucial for her career at the Prague Institute of Chemistry. Vik's roommate from his hostel Bréta (Ivan Vyskocil) is thrilled. He will finally meet the mysterious and fascinating Edita about whom he has learned so much from Vik.

A twelve-year-old is looking for his biological parents after discovering the fact that he was adopted.

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

Film makes the creative process visible by letting its narrative flow in the mind of a foreign director who is researching a film about Franz Kafka in Prague. Based on the principle of dreams and free association, segments unfold that deal with the various points of view that Kafka's work, personality and fate offer. In the labyrinth of his mind, the fictional director projects himself into situations from the author's life, with Kafka himself as his guide. At the same time, he delves into the history of the persecution of the Jews and glimpses the monstrosity of the bureaucratic apparatus that Kafka anticipated but could not have foreseen the monstrous size and function it would grow to a few years after his death in the institutionalized genocide and overall machinery of Nazism.

Three separate short stories by Jan Drda from the collection The Dumb Barricade: The Dynamite Watchman, Hatred and Traces.

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.

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Marta (Lucie Patikova) was blinded in an accident brought on by her careless and indulgent younger sister. Now in a school for the blind, Marta keeps up her hope that she will one day see again, mainly because her mother - out of good intentions - has led her to believe that the blindness is only temporary. Before long, Marta comes to realize that her condition will last until she dies, and she begins to despair, hating her mother for giving her false hope. Only a dedicated psychologist, Dr. Mos (Oldrich Navratil) seems to have the means of retrieving Marta from her depression.

This film, chronicling the last days of Czech resistance fighter Maruska Kuderikova (played by Magda Vasaryova), is based on her diaries. Though she was tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis, her diaries indicate that she was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any means hate them. Told with simple dignity, this film makes clear why Maruska became a national hero.