Václav Lohniský

A second part of a funny adventures of six years old Lucie and her two magic dolls.

Set in Prague during the years leading up to World War II, this family saga tells the story of a cobbler named Vincenc Bursik (Vladimir Mensik), who uproots his clan from the country to the city, only to suffer the loss of his wife and the failure of his shoe business within months. When his daughter moves away to go live with a wealthy businessman as his mistress, Vincenc is left to take care of his two sons, who spend their days in a secret garden vying for the affections of a teenage girl.

The future communist journalist Julius Fučík had a stimulating childhood and youth in a working-class environment, when his moral maturity was already showing. The authors of the film recall that the young Julek was a star of the suburban operetta scene, and in three episodes they depict him both in his early childhood and already at the gymnasium, when the outbreak of the World War shaped his determination.

Matej and Jenda, two of the eight children of the poor Pelc family in the Giant Mountains, help in a glass works where the oldest brother Francek works. They hide into a tub not to be seen by supervisors checking on the ban of children labor. They miss the Epiphany carol (songs and treats door-to-door) and all neighbor village boys again on them in all the neighbor houses. On their way home they are passed by a fast moving big man with a large backpack. The boys send the customs officers, who are pursuing the strange man, to the opposite direction. The man then thanks them and rewards them the next day. Based on fairy-tales and legends the boys think the man is Krakonos (the giant living and ruling in the Giant Mountains).

A docudrama about four weeks in the life of famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. The drama - filled with many of Dvorak's compositions - begins when the composer suddenly decides to cut a concert in London and return home. While on the train, flashbacks reveal his relationship to his wife Anna and her sister Josefina. Both women gave him inspiration, yet Dvorak is clearly troubled in some way as musical excerpts come and go in his creative mind.

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

In the 1600s, an overzealous clergy hauls innocent women in front of tribunals, forces them to confess to imaginary witchery, and engages in brutal torture and persecution of their subjects.

A wonderful fairytale about looking for love, defeating evil and learning some valuable moral lessons on the way. The story begins with the young Prince Velen, who is left in charge of the castle and his three sisters. During the night he has a visitation and before he knows it, all his sisters are married off and gone away, and himself falls in love with beautiful Večernice. Now he is faced with the King's wraths and charged with a quest. The journey, however, hides obstacles and danger; not only treacherous merchants and robbers, but also a evil wizard Mrakomor...

When famous detective Nick Carter visits Prague, he becomes involved in strange case of a missing dog and even stranger carnivorous plant. He becomes convinced that he is standing against his greatest enemy, the Gardener, who supposedly died years ago in a swamp...

Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.

This comedy is about one average family. The father works as master in the factory and his son is studying on high school. One day father must start to visit the evening school. It's the same school as his son visiting. The lives both students are connecting together. The son must teach the math and physics his own father. The father getting to know, that the life of the students is not simple as he supposed.

Martin, a poor student, volunteers to go on a quest to find a cure for the princess Adriana, who is stricken with a strange illness. Unknown to Martin or anyone else, the princess is actually under the spell of the powerful magician Andlobrandini, who is preparing a rejuvenating elixir made from the blood of nine men's hearts.

A stout middle-aged physician whose marriage has come apart establishes a practice in a small town. Gradually he's drawn into the lives of his patients—a childless couple, a pregnant girl with a stern mother, the son of a duck farmer—and each relationship reveals a bit more about him and the idyllic but insular community.

A sincere provincial young man, Frantisek Koudelka leaves to work in Prague. For the trip he buys a computer made horoscope with biorhythms charts, marked according to his date of birth, there are trappy, precarious, unsuccessful and even critical days and few successful days. The clumsy luckless person Frantisek has finally a guidance for his life.

To the intolerant and bloody-minded Prague actor Bergner (Milos Kopecký) is the lead in Moliere's Misanthrope which he is studying now as tailor-made. On top of that he is malicious and he advises to the new actress Helenka (Dagmar Havlová) in such a way that she upsets the theatre director. If Bergner accuses somebody of a mischief and he is wrong, he never apologizes. When he almost crashes an older elegant lady by his car on the zebra crossing, instead of an apology he calls her an old ballet dancer... But in Brno's TV he takes part in a discussion on manners and he gives himself as an example of good manners and grace. In the train he meets a magic old man (Ladislav Pesek) who warns him and admonishes him to change his behavior. After he arrives to Prague the old man's threat comes true.

No synopsis available yet.

In Vražda v hotelu Excelsior, the interwar period homicide detective squad from Prague investigates the murder of a wealthy woman, Mrs Matoušová, which threatens the reputation of the eponymous luxury hotel popular with Prague’s elite. Even the retired police inspector Mrázek (František Filipovský), who works at the Excelsior as a hotel detective, is unable to help at first. Although the investigation inevitably uncovers the hotel staff’s scheming, Vacátko and his team unerringly follow the trail that leads them to the murderer…

Prague in the 1930s. A young, pretty girl gets on a crowded tram. She immediately catches the attention of a young man who not only appreciates the girl's charm, but also tries to steal her handbag discreetly. And so we meet one of the main characters of the film, a swindler, pickpocket and generally strange being Josef Kořínek alias Pépi. In addition to him, the story is populated by other characters from the Prague outskirts. Of course, the film also features the shrewd councilman Vacátko and his inseparable investigators Brůžek and Bouše. They have a sad duty - to track down the murderer of the collector Krále, who was found dead and who lost a sum of money on the way from the bank that could interest many people from his surroundings...

A marquee stands on a sprawling Prague housing estate and is home to two young bricklayers, who have all sorts of life experiences waiting for them in the city. Around the two rural bricklayers absorbed by the big city, the entertainment is more than a little embarrassing, toothless, revealing that at the height of normalisation, even the jolly genre of drama fared poorly, and any satirical allusions were especially undesirable. With no sense of humorous exaggeration and no wittily punctuated plots, the story unfolds, showing how the characters, living in a marquee standing on a sprawling estate, face all the pitfalls of the "big world"...

No synopsis available yet.

Captain Záruba investigates after an anonymous tip flags the seemingly extravagant lifestyle of Chemotex technician Dagmar Králová. Summoned to discuss the matter, Králová’s quarrel with engineer Vaněček, who secretly runs a suburban bootleg alcohol factory, triggers panic among the illicit network led by hotelier Černý. When Králová is found dead near the site of a murdered hitchhiker, autopsy reveals a different killer, launching parallel murder investigations. Forensic teams uncover the clandestine distillery, and gradually piece together motives and perpetrators behind both deaths.

To Moscow have arrived the participants of the international conference of the zoophilologists and also the international jury which is to elect for the world festival the best performance of the program of Moscow circus. Mrs Whistler (Iva Janzurová), British associate professor, makes her understood with the animals in their language but the Czech professor Ruzicka (Jirí Sovák), though he is capable of using the animals language, prefers teaching the animals the human language. Ruzicka's friend, the poodle Archibald, speaks "in Human" very well. The scientific dispute ends with a bet - if Ruzicka teaches the circus elephant to sing, Mrs Whistler will eat up her hat.

The opera lady singer Ema Destinnová is in all her splendor at the American stages. But in Europe there rages war and she decides to return home to Bohemia.

Marek (Jirí Holý), formerly a driver of a long-distance lorry, has served his term for smuggling art works abroad and is released from jail. Years ago, he sacrificed himself and confessed his guilt on behalf of his companions - the drivers Krása, Jelínek, Hess and Novák from the Ministry of Culture who gave them tips. Marek finds Hess and tells him that now he expects the gang to compensate him for the wasted years of his life.

Láda Pitras (Ludek Sobota) and Oto Vacák (Petr Nározný) founded in the company Pragokov a Research department of recruitment of labor. For recruitment of workers in professions sought after both recruiters worked out an effective, often almost illegal methods. They followed secretly for instance the welder Niederle and managed to record his lovesick courting to his colleague Anicka. The fear of his jealous wife made him to join Pragokov.

Kinoautomat was the world's first interactive movie, conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played.

Three Men Travelling is billed as a loosely related sequel to Tri chlapi v chalupe (1963), sending our country protagonists set out from their family nests in the village of Ouplavice into the big wide world. Grandpa Potucek, (Lubomír Lipský) and his son Václav (Jan Skopecek) take part in the cooperative's excursion to spa town Karlovy Vary, a Pilsen brewery and some agricultural enterprises in western Bohemia. During the course of a series of misunderstandings and merrymaking, grandfather Potucek decides he will not let problems with sick calves unsettle him, and that he will persevere in his role as the leader of the cooperative.

The fisherman Fuksa fishes in the creek an old bottle and he sells it to innkeeper Merta. When Merta opens it, a genie appears, who can fulfill all his wishes.

Sherlock Holmes likes to play violin and expects a great career in music. He gets a place in a spa orchestra, but he is again and again distracted by criminal cases. Therefore he is the only one who does not see that his violin has no future. He solves the criminal mysteries in passing but the final test shows that the famous detective is tone-deaf.

Mr. Tau, the quiet and kind magician with a bowler hat and an umbrella, shows up unexpectedly on the wings of a plane during flight. The terrified crew contact the airport security service. After the plane lands, Mr. Tau disappears. The third security inspector Málek is determined to catch the hooligan at any price. To achieve this, he gives up his holiday to visit the children's summer camp. Mr. Málek's son, who just like all the other children is delighted by the new camp cook, Mr. Tau himself, has unknowingly set the inspector on the magician's trail. But the children at the camp are determined not to let their beloved magician get caught and ingeniously place all sorts of traps in Inspector Málek's way.

In medieval times, a horse merchant is forced by a noble to leave part of his stock as payment for crossing his land. Upon returning, he finds his horses near death, and when the noble refuses to compensate him, the merchant fights unsuccessfully against the injustice.

Ten-year-old Martin attends religion at school and is always an altar boy at church. That's the wish of his mother Anci, a bigoted believer. However, Martin encounters hypocrisy at every turn and begins to doubt that God exists. His older brother Eda steals money from his father with impunity, his father steals materials from the cooperative building, and even Martin's best friend Kovajs "sins" without scruples. Pastor Hornof tries in various ways to maintain his influence over his sheep, but is hindered by people with a "progressive" socialist mindset. When Martin's beloved Angora rabbits, who have done nothing wrong to anyone, die, the boy's faith is clear. He decides to join a pioneer organisation. All that's left is to keep it a secret from his mother...

This early short by Jaromil Jireš anticipates the formal and stylistic experimentation that would characterize VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS.

A detective story revolving around an ancient treasure from the ninth century, believed to have been destroyed during World War II, takes place in an archaeological environment. Its main character is, alongside Captain Exner, who is investigating a strange murder committed on the premises of a scientific institute, a young student at the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Slovak Republic, Kamila Housková, who discovers that the treasure was not destroyed, but most likely stolen. The bright girl continues her search for the treasure against Captain Exner's will and leads the investigators to a trail that proves the connection between the lost treasure and the murdered woman...

Pavel, a young student living in Prague in 1942, hides a Jewish girl in his apartment building's attic. Amidst the brutality of the occupying German army, love blossoms between the two. He is her only link to the outside world. Then the two are discovered by Pavel's mother, who forces the residents of the apartment building to decide whether Hana can remain.

During the Nazi occupation of a Czech city civilians are being rounded up on the slightest of pretexts and shot. One day three high school boys who crack jokes about a recently deceased "hero of the Reich" are pulled out of school by the Gestapo.

A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into music instruments. Great mystery is immediately found by TV station. And soon the military base becomes a stage for huge TV show.

The Ronov castle has been changed into a hotel, offering stylish facilities to its guests: weddings in the torture chamber, a Black Lancer kidnapping brides, a night's lodging in a family tomb etc. The reformed petty swindler Felix Pacínek (Bohumil Smída) runs the hotel. The business is far from thriving; the place is half-empty, and the jazz band Skeleton, together with their singer Zuzanka (Jaroslava Obermaierová), decide to leave. Nobody in the hotel has any idea that the band is in fact a gang of thieves who have just robbed the Prague State Bank, taking two million crowns from its vaults.

The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.

Screen adaptation of Julius Fucik's story about communist fighters.

Farmers get away from their arguments by embarking on a religious pilgrimage, enjoy a picnic en route, and on their return decide to form a cooperative.

Even if a person grumbles about difficulties, he should realize that he will find a place where he did not want to go at all. Such an exemplary realization is also reached by a budding doctor who was assigned a remote border village as his first posting - his fiancé did not want to go to such a backwater at all. But the example of the local doctor, who is about to retire, convinces him that a good doctor is needed everywhere.

Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.

This three-part Austrian/Czech comedy stretches the boundaries of what is considered to be humorous. Part one finds a silent film actor upset because of a rival actor's attention to the former's wife. When he kills his rival, it is only when he is strapped to the electric chair that he realizes that this is his last live scene. The second episode has the wife of an elderly British nobleman having an affair with the young gamekeeper of their estate. Part three finds a peasant woman taking a lover when her husband goes off to fight the war.

A car deliberately runs down a young man on a road by a small border town. The locals recognize the dead man as one of the students who were there on volunteer work some time before. The police detectives, Major Kalas (Rudolf Hrusínský) and Lieutenant Varga (Radoslav Brzobohatý) can then get on the trail of the people with whom the victim was involved, especially at the photographic studio headed by Bohuslav Pacer (Bohus Záhorský).

Shortish forty-year old Ludvík Podzimek, lute and flute player in a Prague orchestra, is far from being an attractive man. He is nevertheless generally considered a great 'Don Juan'. Women take up with him out of a certain motherly compassion and Ludvík's tender heart does not allow him to split with any of them. His lovers thus accumulate and cause him numerous troubles.

A poor miner, Kuba Dařbuján, cares for his wife Markýtka and eleven children. When a newborn arrives, he seeks a godfather and, finding only Death fair to all, accepts a pact: as a doctor whom Death accompanies at the foot of a patient’s bed, he can heal; but if Death stands at the head, no cure is possible. Kuba eventually heals even a miserly brewer, violating the pact and imprisoning Death, leading to a world where no one can die and unforeseen chaos follows.

A Czech ship's doctor accidentally meets his fellow expatriates on a tropical island. Under his influence, a sympathetic young woman, who has gone abroad with her sickly old father and her selfish and unprincipled husband, decides to return to her homeland...

The sad hero of the story, Petr, an ordinary lawyer in a construction company, is crowded into a small apartment in Žižkov with his wife and grandparents, desperately struggling with the lack of money. One day he offers an old man a seat on a crowded trolley bus and is generously rewarded for his good deed, for the unknown old man is a fabulous grandfather. He gives Peter a magic bell and the opportunity to make three wishes, but the first two slip through his fingers. For the third, the astonished man must take time to think...

Spring 1943: A three-member group of resistance fighters flies from a Soviet military airport into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to establish contacts with an illegal communist center in the occupied territory.

In a small Texas town where cowboys lived their usual lives, local villain Bill Crooked Mouth and his cronies played cards in the saloon and the bandits raided the town, there lived rancher Andrews and his daughter Daisy. One day, rancher Andrews succumbed to his evil passion and lost not only the girl's dowry, but also the entire ranch, to Bill and his villains at cards. But at that moment, rescue appeared in the form of the noble cowboy Sandy, who fell in love with the girl and rushed to her aid. Unfortunately, the father also lost his daughter in poker. Sandy saved him from suicide - he won everything back. Then a melee broke out, during which the guests whitewashed the entire saloon and chased out the villains, led by Bill Crooked Mouth. Daisy asked how Sandy had acquired the money he had invested in the game - he had won it in the Sportka lottery. And so their happiness was no longer hindered...

Children's detective stories were very successful in the 1960s, and the stories of Martin the criminal even had several sequels. In this film, Martin investigates a mysterious ancient crime in a castle where today the guide mentions this fact only as a curiosity. He is led to this by a broken display case on which he finds a child's handprints. And in a seemingly mundane red slide, easily mistaken for a rare diamond, he finds an important clue...

A worker steals bits and pieces of building materials from work to construct a new home for himself and his girlfriend. When he discovers that she’s having an affair with his boss, he devises one elaborate plot after another to murder the rival, each time with pathetic results.

As a young actor František Lukávec and his teacher Vladimir Tuma became enemies. František insisted that Tuma was dismissed from the school as a reactionary and hostile to the new government. Many years passed, and here they met again on the stage of a theater. František is assigned the role of Julius Fucik, Tuma plays the role of a Gestapo man in the same play. In the course of the action, the Gestapo man beats Fucik. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Tuma beats up his old enemy during the dress rehearsal. Frantisek's face is bleeding, but he will still play. The rehearsal continues...

There are fairy tales that appear on TV screens every Christmas and there are fairy tales that have somewhat fallen into oblivion and few people remember them anymore. This is one of the lesser known ones. Its plot certainly needs no further introduction. After all, the fairy tale story of the Swimmer, the charcoal-maker's son, to whom the judges attribute the hand of a royal princess born at the same moment, is one of those which are not forgotten. And the Swimmer's difficult journey in pursuit of an almost impossible task, the three golden hairs of Grandfather Allfather, who is the Sun and dislikes mankind, is as fabulous as the advice he brings to three towns beset by strange woes.

Concert master Karel Mašek is a drunk, as well as engineer Danda and other regular guests of the pub U Kroců. Mašek returns from the pub in the morning and promises the woman that he will stop drinking. But he failed again, and the orchestra players refuse to play with him. Danda returns home without a bag and goes to Krocs again in the morning, even though he has an important job at work. He has been degraded to subordinate job position, but he refused to admit it at home.

A poignant overview of how short life can be, this interesting drama from Czech director Vojetch Jasny is divided into four separate segments. In the first skit, a young child's impressions are observed as his newborn baby sister becomes a part of the family. In the second, a young woman falls in love for the first time one summer, and in the third, a tough, older peasant woman battles against the farming cooperatives. Finally, in the last segment, everything comes full circle as a woman who is about to become a grandmother dies while her daughter-in-law has not yet given birth.

A comedy about a young salesman Havelka, who gets his life's wish. He wins his dream car Spartacus in a lottery. So together with his fiancée, they experience a happiness they have never known before and have no idea that their dream car will complicate their lives...

In the pulmonary sanatorium, patients live out their small fates. But not everyone takes a responsible approach to their illness. For example, a young student falls in love, the lovers even take a secret flight, but the young man's condition deteriorates dramatically because of it.

No synopsis available yet.