FAMU

Family visit turns wild.

A zoologist and a biochemist go out into an oilfield with a cameraman and filmmaker to observe and study the elusive oil gobblers.

Jakub, The Old Believers, and Piemule are three documentaries about forgotten people by director Jana Sevciková. All three are distributed on the same DVD under the name Old Believers. Piemule offers a close look at the descendants of Czech immigrants in Romania.

The initiation of a young Jewish child into Guernica's world.

The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly subject to the voice of others.

Final train station turnes out to be something much more different...

In a series of juxtaposed images and sounds, Jaromil Jireš comments on the tragic premature death of thousands as well as their posterity due to the atomic bomb.

Young Eugene from the provinces travels to Prague in search of fame. Once there he gets an offer to write engagé lyrics for pop songs...

A color puppet film based on the famous ballad of K. J. Erben "Aquarius".

A character from a musical film falls into the real world in this short, predating similar films by Woody Allen (The Purple Rose of Cairo) and Wojciech Marczewski (Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema).

A film about filmmaking.

The new pub patron is advised to take a stew. He asks for its recipe from the hostess, but she refuses. Then he sneaks into the kitchen and peeks into the freezer, discovering a horrible thing.

A student work by Jiří Menzel, filmed during his second year at the FAMU film school. Views of old Prague and its tenement buildings, symbolizing the obsolete past, alternate with shots of construction sites for new prefabricated apartment buildings. In spite of certain unavoidable propagandistic overtones added by the director, it is notable as the beginning of his search for a “dramaturgy of colors.”

Her first foray into documentary filmmaking was a short called Green Street (1959), a look at an over-loaded freight train departing from Prague. Though only nine minutes in length, Chytilová’s astute editing ensured a visual spectacle.