Ivo Palec

A television recording of a theatrical production of Alfred Jarry's absurd drama about the gluttonous, gluttonous, compulsive and unscrupulous Father Ubo, who, with the generous advice of his ambitious wife, gets rid of the Polish king and seizes his throne. He establishes a reign of terror in which he only cares about his own benefit, so it is not surprising that the people rebel against him. The recording was made at the end of July 1968 and, thanks to a copy saved from destruction during the normalization period, was first published in 1990.

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Set in Baroque France, a scheming widow and her lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman. The lover, Valmont, bets that he can seduce her, even though she is an honorable woman. If he wins, he can have his lover to do as he will. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.

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This futuristic science fiction comedy features an atomic bomb blast that causes women to grow beards and lose the ability to have children. A summit meeting is held at the United Nations, with the proposed solution of building a time machine. The decision is made to travel back in time and murder Einstein, with the hopeful result being that without the noted mathematician's research there will be no atomic bombs.

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Getting into the popular music spotlight is not easy, as even an enthusiastic amateur, an overconfident young man whose singing career soon fails, will find out... A tantalising insight into the backstage of the entertainment industry, neither the musical passages nor the unexpectedly massive participation of the singing stars of the time succeeded.

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The work of actors on a stage makes a dreamlike parallelism between artistic immagination and the concreteness of everyday life. Tribute to Prague's Divadlo na zàbradlì, theater that has been a point of reference for Theater of the Absurd in Czechoslovakia in Sixties

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A man boards on a tram together with a naked boy. Somebody has stolen the boy's clothes when he was out bathing, leaving him with not even change for the tram. The man has taken care of him and is taking him home. At first nobody notices them but as soon as the people realize they are seeing something out of the ordinary they begin to react to the situation. Some are content with the simple explanation as to why the boy is naked. Others are agitated, for they see the whole situation as something unseemly. An ordinary incident, which might have been passed over in silence, results in a heated argument that turns into a fight. More and more people join in the fight until the police are forced to intervene.

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An anthology in three jazz-infused tales: an idealistic student’s romance with a pragmatic trumpeter; a vibraphonist’s urgent journey ending in tragedy; and drummer Honza’s moral dilemma as he confronts how far he’ll go to obtain his dream kit.

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Three stories (Gabriela, Eda and Jana), two of which are dedicated to girls. They share a common motif of disillusionment when the protagonists encounter scorn and disinterest.

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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.

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This satirical micro-comedy condemns the petty bourgeois mentality, especially bragging. The ridiculous protagonists are two elderly neighbours who are constantly exaggerating the wealth and status of their now grown-up children, who have to submit to their whims - for example, they have to borrow a car to look quite affluent...

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The year is 2163. Starship Ikaria XB-1 embarks on a mission deep into space in search of alien life. During their perilous journey the crew confront the effects of a malignant dark star, the destructive legacy of the 20th century and, ultimately, the limits of their own sanity.

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The "Concordia" trading company in Würzburg is a secret headquarters of the MID, a secret service agency of the US Army. For years, espionage, sabotage, and diversion operations originated from here in order to undermine the Socialist Republic of Germany. A favorable moment for a military attack approaches and plans are developed. These plans are placed in the hands of Major Collins, who keeps them in a safe. Hansen has worked for him for many years, but also for the Stasi as a double agent. Security Chief Colonel Rock knows there is a leak, but Hansen has passed every test thrown at him. He is trying to deal with his current assignment: acquiring the plans so they can be made public. His mission is to get them out of the safe and into the GDR without getting caught.

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Czech friends help refugees from Nazi Germany escape in 1939.

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A group of jolly young people work in the Prague Tesla factory, also spending most of their leisure time together. One of them, guitar player Zdenek, begins to shun his friends' company. He has fallen in love with Vera, who does not belong to the group. The happy-go-lucky young man already has several acquaintances and has his own method to get a girl: to take his motorcycle, his guitar and a bottle of wine and take her to a rented houseboat. Vera, however, is different and gets angry at Zdenek. But she is fond of him and thus eventually spends a whole evening with him on the houseboat. At a preventative medical examination, the doctor tells Vera she is pregnant.

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The winter Krkonoše Mountains have many pitfalls, especially if you are overly concerned about their treacherous splendour. The somewhat unheroic hero of this clumsily and uninterestingly shot film is a mail carrier who volunteers for the Mountain Service. Only in a blizzard does he overcome his fear of avalanches when he saves the lives of two hikers caught off guard by the suddenly deteriorating weather...

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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.

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Spy film about a man with a face lift who gets recruited by western organisations.

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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...

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The growing conflict between the unruly owner of the villa and his lodger ends up in court. The cohabitation ends in bodily harm - and the film actually translates two versions of the same events, as seen by each of the parties involved. However, the attempt at morality, which proclaimed the necessity of removing the old survivals in people's thinking, did not quite work, and the testimony presented is at times a bit stiff.

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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...

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A detective comedy about ex-cashiers who - except for one - have improved and lead a proper and peaceful life and mostly desperately resist the slightest reminder of their past. However, one of them, Josef Fiala, formerly known as Procházka, is one day asked to open a safe in the Sitex factory that has been slammed open with keys inside by careless employees. The operation goes well, but in time Fiala finds himself suspected of theft...

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Explores young adults' fears of being conscripted by the communist government into working outside of Prague, a relative oasis of creativity and freedom of thought. From an early script by Milos Forman.

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Depiction of Czech students in the 1950s. The kids are less interested in communism than in rock n’ roll. Czech authorities deemed the work decadent and subversive, which led to the director being kicked out of film school.

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Private psychic Mathias Scibolini practices his profession properly and to the full satisfaction of his clients. When the integration of the clairvoyants into the municipal enterprise occurs, he continues to divine under his civil name Mathias Scibolini. The administration is broken up, the fortune-telling services are sloppy and client satisfaction declines. After hours, however, it is possible to go to the clairvoyant's apartment, where everything is as it used to be.

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