Czech

Kolya

Winner of the 1997 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this charming Czech drama uses the backdrop of the Russian military occupation in Prague for its funny, sad, and ultimately delightful story of a 55-year-old man's friendship with a 5-year-old boy. It doesn't exactly start out as friendship: Louka is a cellist who lost his symphony job after writing a sarcastic remark on an official form, and although he's struggling financially he still enjoys the company of several young women who find him irresistibly sexy. The last thing he needs is a surrogate child, but that's what he gets when young Kolya is abandoned by his mother, a Russian woman Louka had agreed to marry so she could avoid being sent back to Russia. The mother runs off to her boyfriend in Germany, leaving Louka with a 5-year-old kid who only speaks Russian! As directed by Jan Sverák (whose father, Zdenek Sverák, plays Louka), this predicament offers a lovingly detailed account of how Louka and Kolya discover each other, and how their mutual awkwardness evolves into a heartwarming father-son relationship. While the Russian presence creates an atmosphere of suspicion and restriction, the deepening connection between Louka and Kolya turns this into an unforgettable film, beautifully photographed, sensitively performed, and directed with just the right combination of subtle sentiment and harsh reality. Its Oscar was definitely well deserved. --Jeff Shannon

Winner of the Academy Award(R) and Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film, this irresistible comedy treat was embraced by critics and audiences everywhere! A confirmed bachelor is in for the surprise of his life when a get-rich-quick scheme backfires ... setting off a wild set of circumstances -- and leaving him with a pint-sized new roommate! Now, with a mischievous five-year-old named Kolya suddenly in his care ... life in this once carefree playboy's tiny apartment changes faster than he could ever imagine! Uplifting and endlessly funny, KOLYA is delightful motion picture entertainment you'll want to take home!

Zelary

Dark Blue World

Director Jan Sverák's Dark Blue World embraces sentimentality with such brio it is hard to resist. The film relays the little-known WWII story of Czech fighter pilots who escaped the Nazi occupation of their country to fight in Britain's Royal Air Force. Those who survived the battles were placed in work camps upon their return home by a then-entrenched, paranoid Communist regime. Sverák (Kolya) tacks back and forth between Franta (Ondrej Vetchy), a worldly captain in the defunct Czech Air Force, and Karel (Krystof Hádek), his earnest young recruit, as they leave home to fight the enemy on foreign soil. Only one returns to tell his story, from a prison hospital bed. While enduring life in the RAF with fellow Czech pilots, Franta and Karel manage to fall in love with the same woman, learn English, swing dance, recite poems, sing rousing Czech songs, and perform heroic feats. Dogfights in the air and inevitable losses ensue, but it is the genuine camaraderie evoked by a gifted cast of Czech actors that saves the film from effusive excess. Like a charismatic captain steeling his company before battle, Sverák can't resist indulging romantic clichés, but his actors, in their fresh intensity, are more than up to the task set before them. --Fionn Meade

Three Wishes for Cinderella

The Firemen's Ball (Criterion Collection)

A milestone of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman's first color film The Firemen's Ball (Horí, má panenko) is both a dazzling comedy and a provocative political satire. A hilarious saga of good intentions confounded, the story chronicles a firemen's ball where nothing goes right-from a beauty pageant whose reluctant participants embarrass the organizers to a lottery from which nearly all the prizes are pilfered. Presumed to be a commentary on the floundering Czech leadership, the film was "banned forever" in Czechoslovakia following the Russian invasion and prompted Forman's move to America.

Closely Watched Trains - Criterion Collection

Jiri Menzel's funny, tragic 1966 film, set during the years of Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia, may be admired today more out of nostalgia than anything, but in fact it holds up very well as a wry satire from the years of the Czech New Wave. Vaclav Neckar stars as an unambitious youth whose chief preoccupation is a wish for sex, but who secondarily sees the draw of joining the organized Resistance movement. The latter, however, would require energy and focus, and Neckar's character--who does as little work as possible as an apprentice railway platform guard--prefers the inertia of his small-town depot. Spending his time observing the philandering of an older guard, keeping clear of his wild-eyed boss, and flirting with the female conductor of a passing train, the young hero has his priorities in order but must deal with an increasing responsibility to a larger rebellion. The film has a nice mix of rural lethargy, surreal hints, and comic knowingness about the landscape of teenage ambivalence. Finally, there is something else: the shock of a confrontation between dreams and real-world obligation, particularly in a world gone mad through no fault of one's own. --Tom Keogh

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher's apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy Award®-winning Closely Watched Trains is a masterpiece of human observation and one of the best-loved films of the Czech New Wave.

Jan Svankmajer: The Ossuary and Other Tales

Divided We Fall

A daring comedy of ethics, Divided We Fall takes place during World War II in a small, Nazi-occupied town in Czechoslovakia. Josef and Maria, a childless couple, have withdrawn further and further from reality even as the war circles closer to their eerily quiet town. Josef's decision to sleep through a war he doesn't want to acknowledge is soon tested when the Jewish son of his former employer arrives in the middle of the night seeking refuge. David, the sole survivor from his family, escaped from a concentration camp in Poland and managed to return to the only place he knows in search of help. As they harbor David in their pantry over the next three years, Josef and Maria discover the depth of their resolve, forced to play the role of seeming collaborators in order to save themselves and David. Reminiscent more of Yugoslav filmmaker Emir Kustirica's devastating brand of black humor (Underground, Time of the Gypsies) than the saccharine Life Is Beautiful, to which it has been repeatedly compared, Divided We Fall achieves quite a lot, capturing the pervasive suspicion and betrayal of World War II through the unexpected guise of situation comedy. --Fionn Meade

The Shop On Main Street - Criterion Collection

An inept Czech peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him "Aryan controller" of an old Jewish widow's button shop. Humor and tragedy fuse in this scathing exploration of one cowardly man's complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime. Made near the height of Soviet oppression in Czechoslovakia, The Shop on Main Street features intense editing and camera work which won it the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film in 1965.

Daisies

In this key film from the Czech New Wave two uninhibited young women (both named Marie) turn against the numbing state of society in a madcap flurry of pranks and material destruction. Beneath the outrageous surface of this avant-garde comedy is a defiant feminist statement and an acknowledgement of the desperation that goes hand-in-hand with rebellion--a state of mind represented by one girl's attempted suicide. The film so unsettled Czech government officials (and a great many other men) that its release was held up for a year. "...the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960s" (The Faber Companion to Foreign Films). In Czech with English subtitles.System Requirements:Running time: 74 mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN UPC: 736899009236 Manufacturer No: DV62817