Vladimír Stach

Thirty Cases of Major Zeman is a Czechoslovak action-drama television show intended as a political propaganda to support the official attitude of the communist party. The series were filmed in the 1970s. Each episode encompasses one year, and investigations are stylized to that year. Most are inspired by real cases. The series follows the life of police investigator Jan Zeman during his career from 1945 to 1975.

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This story from the time of the occupation tells how the students of the teachers' institute decided to hold a traditional ball despite the ban. However, they had to cope with conditions more than threatening: the presence of Nazi thugs who intend to execute captured partisans as a warning...

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Honza is a clever young man and a strong man who is not afraid of anything. Despite this, he cannot find friends in his village, and even the girls are just laughing at him. That is why he prefers to go out into the world to try his luck. He is not scared by the hastrman, he overcomes even the fear of the devils in the castle and frees the beautiful princess, whom he marries. The fearless Honza is only truly scared when the princess gets lost in the forest. When he finds her again, he is richer for the experience that losing a loved one is the worst thing that can happen to a person in the world.

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It is 1920, political unrest is growing in Prague and the Social Democrats are about to betray their historic mission by prioritising their own selfish interests instead of those of the working class. An extortionist scandal falls on the Social Democratic deputy Jandák, forcing him to renounce his convictions. Under these circumstances, the seriously ill Hungarian revolutionary Kerekes, who had to flee his homeland, is hiding in Prague...

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Wenceslas II, who already has adult children Eliška and Václav, refuses to marry the young Alžběta Rejčka. In the end, he succumbs to the insistence of Abbot Konrád. The queen brings him Poland as a dowry, and Wenceslas II thus expands his empire. He still lives in the shadow of his great father, Přemysl Otakar II, and his lords reproach him for his weakness and inability to fight. Wenceslas is truly afraid of the moment when he will have to lead an army into the field and prefers to settle disputes diplomatically. His fencing teacher Hynek of Dubá and his mistress Anežka know about the king's weakness, and Václav seeks their company rather than his young wife. However, Rejčka admires the king and trusts him with the charm of a young girl. The enemy invades the country and advances quickly. It is necessary to confront him in the field, but the king hesitates and postpones the decision.

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A crime story about Western diplomats in Prague.

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A broadly drawn ideological epic set in the summer of 1947 in the borderlands of northern Bohemia: reactionary elements plot to undermine postwar social change while committed local communists struggle to organize workers and defend the emerging order. The narrative follows several archetypal figures—steadfast party activists, wary peasants, and obstructive reactionaries—whose clashes illustrate the claimed inevitability of working-class victory under communist leadership.

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This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.

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Soldier Honza Marek got a three-day leave. Marta, whom he dated before the war, did not wait for him, but she prefers him again to her new admirer, the impractical and still dreamy Ivan...

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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.

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The thrilling story begins in 1318, during the reign of John of Luxembourg, when the Czech nobility rebelled against the king. However, the lord of Zlenice, Oldřich of Zlenice, did not join the resistance. He summoned the surrounding nobles to his castle for negotiations... and in the morning he was found dead. He had been murdered in his chamber, which was locked from the inside!

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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…

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Pan Tau always had a gentle expression and a friendly smile, he was elegantly dressed in a stroller, with an umbrella and a white carnation in the lapel. Foremost, he was famous for his magic bowler hat. By tapping on his hat, Pan Tau was able to change his appearance into a puppet, to conjure up miscellaneous objects or to do other magic. His most characteristically behavior is that he would help children who were experiencing some sort of difficulties in-between their dreams and reality, like finding a place for skiing, settling family problems on Christmas, and even give a boy a good time at a fair when he is supposed to have piano lessons. To adults, he usually remained invisible.

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Who wouldn't want to return to the limelight? Years ago, actress Slávka Hradilová was a movie star. Today, she is approaching 60 and the most she does is appear in commercials. But she still keeps in shape. She regularly meets with friends to help them solve their problems, enjoys her teenage granddaughter, but above all she longs to get a big role in front of the movie camera again. When one day she gets an offer with a script in hand, she beams and heads to the studios where she was once almost a queen. But it turns out that times have changed, and today's directors want something different from actors than routine gestures and flashy facial expressions. So the former star is in for a profound disappointment...

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At the funeral of his schoolmate, the nearly-fifty-year old architect Jirí Mánek (Václav Voska) meets his former close acquaintance - physician Jarmila (Blanka Bohdanová). They both are still single. Jarmila has recently returned to Prague after years of work on the frontier. Jirí leaves for a business trip. As a conservationist, he is to grant permission for an adaptation of a Baroque château to office spaces. On the road, a pretty young hitchhiker named Eva (Ida Rapaicová) stops him. Eva is Slovak and her spontaneous behavior enchants Jirí. He thus does not mind making a short detour and takes Eva all the way to the luxurious cottage of her parents. A romance develops between the two people, so different in age and temperament.

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The theft of a pearl necklace and subsequent murder took place at the Tartaros cabaret. All this could compromise the minister, who is an admirer of the singer Clara. The real culprits must be found as soon as possible...

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On one Sunday, when a scrap metal collection is announced, the children find a strange wire puzzle that grants every wish. Soon the town where the children live and go to school is in turmoil. But selfish adults, eager to investigate the mystery, destroy the spell...

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Radio announcer Petrícek reads the evening news in a studio. Viki, the female editor of a woman's program, is annoyed by the stereotypical information he provides as well as by the speaker's melodious voice and his heart-felt performance. Then she gets an idea for a prank. She calls the speaker from the neighboring room on the phone and pretends to be an unhappily married woman who draws all her strength to live from Petrícek's voice.

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Amy Dorrit spends her days earning money for the family and looking after her proud father who is a long term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. Amy and her family's world is transformed when her employer's son, Arthur Clennam, returns from overseas to solve his family's mysterious legacy and discovers that their lives are interlinked.

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Several foreign agents are interested in a famous Austrian scientist, the discoverer of an artificial protein. The endangered man never notices the trouble around him. His protection was entrusted to the mysterious Madame Elizabeth, amongst agents famed as the ' 006, in fact, working for State Security...

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Oldrich is the runt of his village, beaten by his father, bullied by the other boys. But he has imagination on his side, and a wiry toughness they can’t defeat. The village is in turmoil, because the Nazi occupiers have just retreated and the Red Army is advancing. Oldrich dodges amid the mayhem and panic, taking his share of blows but always managing to stay one step ahead.

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It is almost twenty years after the war. Wounds of the past that have never fully healed, but are still carried by many in their hearts. Marie Vláčilová, a survivor of one of the prison camps in Germany, also carries the traumas of the time with her. Now, so many years later, a mass grave of prisoners from that camp has been found and investigators visit Marie to get any information they can from her about the camp. With her important information, she is then to become a crown witness for the prosecution in Germany and now prepares to travel. But this brings back more and more unpleasant memories - especially of her daughter Paula, who has been through German re-education and hardly knew her mother after the reunion...

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In the Hussite times, religious truth was sifted even on the tips of weapons. When in 1430 the Hussites set out on a raid to Nuremberg, the so-called Spanila Cavalry, to defend their doctrine, the young commander of the cavalry, the landowner Keřský, whose bride had once been kidnapped by a vicious crusader, saw it as an opportunity for personal revenge. Although Oldřich Daněk has tried to establish a distinctive interpretation of historical events, he reflects on where the blinded desire to punish a bad deed with further cruelty leads, but his version seems too thesis-like and lifeless, it does not rise above the descriptively illustrated scenes from old Czech chronicles...

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After inheriting a villa from his uncle, Emil Tuma meets its strange inhabitants, getting him in trouble.

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Olga Valentová, whose father was a communist resistance fighter and died during the occupation, works in the export department of Tatrovka. The young woman recapitulates her life and returns to her father's ideals.

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