FAMU

Fati Farari, a black man from Africa, is completing his studies in classical piano at the Music Academy of Prague. It's the day before his first solo concert, where he is going to play Bach. While he strolls around the city he is thinking, not so much about the concert as about himself, both as a lonely foreigner and as a human being in cosmos. Here and there he encounters some racist comments, but mostly he just feels the weight of social exclusion because of his otherness, especially when it comes to women. On the morning of the day for his concert the embassy informs him that his whole family has perished. He feels totally broken, although he thinks that everyone holds some pain inside. His piano teacher, a professor at the Academy, looks him up, and tells him that he heard what has happened. The professor advises him to communicate his feelings that evening by using his Bach.

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.

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.”

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

In a rare instance of literary adaptation, Chytilová was inspired by Franz Kafka’s writings. Mr. K stashes stolen jewelry away at home and seldom allows his wife to wear it. A nosy neighbour, Mr. B, drops in. A cat observes it all.

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 run-of-the-mill family is terrorized by strangers dressed in military garb who invade their private realm.

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

A short documentary about the production of movie marquee art for cinemas in Prague.

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

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).

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.

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.

On a sunny afternoon an old man speaks to a laundress about his love for Provence, then a black flag is unfurled outside the town monument: news has arrived over the radio that the famous composer Foerster, born in the town, has just died.

Jan Schmidt and Pavel Juráček turn their attention to the problem of Czechoslovakia's unloved cars in this whimsical documentary short.

A tram pasted with posters travels through Prague. The mounted loudspeakers invite passers-by to a series of concerts of Giuseppe Verdi's masterpieces. On the tram a party of young people is getting drunk.