Video Kings 2020

Copying videos illegally on a mass scale is one thing, but making a marketable product out of them is quite another. Just think of the most basic problem: language – your average customer won’t be a polyglot! The answer to that problem all over Central and Eastern Europe was a practice called rychlodabing, or speed dubbing in Czech, which consisted of one sole actor voicing all characters, with the original voices usually still audible beneath. This is how millions of people in the ČSSR encountered many forms of cinema for the first time in the 1980s, and how many foreign words became lodged (in a corrupted fashion) in everyday language. Some expressions (often curse words) were born. That’s popular culture at its liveliest. Video Kings is an oral history monument to the art of rychlodabing and some of its masters, as well as a collective reminiscence from a time of political transformation, and how ordinary people were agents of that change in extraordinary ways.

The Banger 2020

The fictional town of Šlukdorf. Here lives a car mechanic who calls himself Bourák. He loves rock and roll, dance, his own gelled hair and, despite being in his fifties, simply “refuses to grow up”. He forgets he has a wife. The only things he loves are Elvis, Cadillacs and anything connected with 1950s America. His daughter Kamila is fed up with life in the squalid town and with her irresponsible father. She is fed up with working in a casino with no windows, open round the clock; that her mother has caught the eye of the local gangster, who is clearly a dimwit; with her father behaving as if he has gone completely barmy. Kamila realizes she has to do something about it. She has to confront her parents with reality, as cruel as that may seem. A black comedy about everything that can happen because of a summer storm, a set of golf clubs, rock and roll, and one incredibly angry daughter.

Loaded Eels 2019

This is not just a game. It is an escape from everyday life, an escape which is impossible to give up. Loaded Eels is a black comedy about a group of men who decided to escape from their everyday lives through role-playing. They pretend to be soldiers of SWAT team, evacuating community centers, dragging unsuspecting people into their game. They are driven by Adrenalin and delusion which makes them feel like Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Everything goes smoothly until they find themselves in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

Prázdniny v Provence 2016

A trio of rock-and-roll musicians arrives in the south of France for a sun-drenched summer of debauched fun and romance in this breezy comedy.

Storyteller 2014

A loose adaption of Bára Nesvadbová's novel of the same name. A novel that lacks a dramatic line and concentrates on the flow of emotions and feelings of two injured and beloved women, two women that the aging lothario Mára came between. The theme of the entire book is the degree and limit of love, a right and ability to love several people simultaneously while hurting them at the same time. Written by Czech Film Center

Doblba! 2005

Zatracení 2002

The Canary Connection 1993

An interesting attempt at a postmodern crazy comedy with elements of parody. The plot turns on the search for the recipe of a liqueur made by the film’s financial backer.

Why? 1987

Why? (Czech: Proč?) is a 1987 Czechoslovak drama film directed by Karel Smyczek. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. The film deals with the hooliganism in Czechoslovakia, particularly with the fans of football club Sparta from Prague, whose supporters were the pioneers of the football fan riots in Czechoslovakia, starting with hooligan actions already in the 1960s, like breaking the trains in which they travelled when they went on Sparta's away games. The film deals with one of such episodes

Give the Devil His Due 1985

Dorota, a bad woman married the miller, out of sheer greed drives him to death. She then took the mill away from his son Peter and threw him out of the hime. Lucifer, who is known to rule in hell, sends out the devil Janek. He is supposed to fetch Dorota because the measure of her earthly sins is overflowing. But the devil himself can not handle this evil woman and flees to the military. There he meets Peter. By joining forces, they finally succeed in transporting the wicked Dorota to hell. Since then hell is hell. But for Peter, who is suddenly in possession of a magic mantle, begins a nice time, because strangely, the prince shows great interest in him.

Putování Jana Amose 1983