The Czechoslovak New Wave by Peter Hames

The year is 1957. Almost all of the farmers in the Moravian village of Kunovice have joined the Unified Farmers' Cooperative. Joza Jagos (Radoslav Brzobohatý), the best farmer in the village, criticizes the poor management of the cooperative, the disorder, and theft, and refuses to have anything to do with the organization. He refuses to give in to the bombastic tactics of the Communist Party's district committee representative Snopka, and prefers to work himself, his wife Nanka and their three children to exhaustion in order to produce the supplies stipulated by the state on time.

Managers at the construction of a big hydro plant are accused of having embezzled money. They have paid the workers generously in return for some of the money.

In the aftermath of World War II, a former Czech soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family. He falls in love with the daughter, who is now a maid, and is forced to confront the stress between his love and his conscience when he discovers her sheltering her German-soldier brother.

A fisherman saves Anada, a woman adrift, from drowning. He takes her to his home, and protects her. Eventually, she occupies a larger place than was to be expected. He commits adultery with her, but his own wife seems to be in love with the strange young woman.

This film brings us back to show us the life of the famous ancient sage Aesop, who helped people with his wisdom in their struggle for freedom and happiness.

A young man sets out for an aimless stroll by tram from the center to the outskirts of Prague.

In this movie, TV sets are full of life. If a person is in TV (e.g. because it was filmed on the street) it has a double that's right in the TV set. This double needs energy from the true character to survive. Each time, the real human watches TV, his Double will pull life energy from him. So there's a mysterious Death-serial. Many persons die in front of their TV set and nobody knows why. Olda, the main character, is one of the persons, that get more and more weak. He is near death, till Fisarek, the natural healer appears.He teaches Olda how he can resist this magic force and how he can fight it.

A surrealistic revision of Alice in Wonderland.

Various scenes in the life of a tight-knit community in Czech village exploring the human spirit in the backdrop of the post-war political changes they experience.

In a tiny Central European village, voracious wolves kill the members of a ceremony, except the bride who is saved by the 10-year-old groom's brother. That day, she gives birth to a girl and betroths her to her savior. A decade passes and on the girl's birthday, a troupe of female circus performers arrive and the girls finds herself more interested in the young son of the group's owner.

Vladimír Michálek chose an unconventional adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel for his feature debut. Artistically reminiscent of the classic films of Karel Zeman, the director reinterpreted this dark story of a man vainly seeking a place in a rigidly ordered society by changing the desperate conclusion into a happy end. The film provided Czech comedian Jirí Lábus with a new kind of role: that of the despotic uncle of a main hero Karel Rossman (Martin Dejdar).

Towards the end of 1942 a young prisoner Maruska awaits in her cell in prison in Breslau (after war Polish Wroclaw) her execution. After death sentence it was ninety nine days of grace of life that were granted to prisoners by the Nazis, a period during which the prisoners were put to work. Maruska paints the eyes of the plaster tin soldiers by a thin brush and thus she takes the opportunity to put down secretly the fragments of her memories, thoughts and expectations. She hopes she will manage to smuggle these "scraps", as she calls them, to her close friends and family. In retrospect there are returning the girl's experiences.

The story about events during the First World War. The wife of an officer of the Austrian army decides to surprise her husband and to visit him in his unit at Christmas time. She is disappointed to find only a cruel soldier. Fate makes her be present at the time when he is suffering from pain and slowly dying. She asks a therapeutic, a prisoner in a near-by camp, to rid her husband of his pain.

A young gynecologist can't figure out whether to get serious with a young nurse or to stay casual with his married lover. Things get complicated when both women don't want to play his game anymore.

It's the turn of the century and jobs are hard to find. A young man assigns himself the job of a store clerk, without pay, only a place to sleep and eat, after he was manipulated by a hoodlum friend into robbing the man's store. Soon he falls in love with the pragmatic store owner's daughter, who hesitates in giving her heart, or body. Nonetheless, the young man perseveres, much to the chagrin of her strict Jewish mother, who doesn't want her daughter marrying a gentile.

Five non-related vignettes are presented, each showcasing the need and want for human connection. In "Mr. Baltazar's Death", a middle aged couple who are experts at mechanics, travel to a motorcycle race where they congregate with the masses on the section of the course where historically there has been the most action of the destructive kind. In "Imposters", two elderly hospital patients talk about their past professional glories as a journalist and light opera star respectively. Each man wants to hear about the other more than tell his own story for good reason. In "The House of Joy", two national insurance agents believe they have an easy sale when they visit an elderly goat farmer/amateur painter, who uses whatever surface as his canvass, and paints his life and his dreams. But the sale will not be as easy as the men first believe it will be. In "The Restaurant the World", a wedding reception is taking place in one part of a busy self-serve diner. The reception guests are oblivious to the sadness of real life taking place all around their small current vacuum of a world, with the bride determined to make the most of *her* night. And in "Romance", a working class lad, out on the town on his own, is mesmerized by a young Romani girl.

Faced with a looming death, an aging prankster makes the most of his remaining life.

Eva is a new member of a girl's boarding school and textile factory. She looks up to the free-spirited Jana who struggles against conformity and discipline. Jana's conflicts with the staff and other girls have consequences for all.

A lawyer named Radosta organizes a complex 12-way apartment swap meeting at retired singer Bílek's flat, calling it "the lightning ball." Various complications arise during the process.

A feature-length documentary based on the mutual experiences of a trio of directors - Miroslav Janek, Roman Vávra, and Vít Janecek - which portrays life in the border village of Bystré during the last year of the millennium. The film concentrates on the exuberant social life of the community, including many bizarre recent customs, as well as on several very intimate moments in the lives of the inhabitants.

In this gothic rendition of the classic fairy tale, a merchant's youngest daughter is held prisoner by a mysterious winged beast.

Two high school boys, both taken with a girl in another school, are expelled after a conflict with a headmaster, in this drama of adolescence and critique of authoritarianism.