Movies: Jan Balzer

Even in 1970, films were made, prepared in previous years and expressing the poetics of that time. Ivan Renč created an almost protocol parable, deliberately set outside time and space, playing out a supremely model situation. In a somewhat rambling ...

The story of a first love disappointment. Sensitive Lenka finds it very difficult to overcome the unsuccessful course of her meeting with a boy for whom she felt more than sympathy......

A character from a musical film falls into the real world in this short, predating similar films by Woody Allen (The Purple Rose of Cairo) and Wojciech Marczewski (Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema)....

Maniac, a driver, sits on the track women, which then rape and kill. For loved ones, he is an ordinary person who has a wife and child. When exposed, he does not stop before killing his wife and takes his son hostage, under the guise of which he is t...

Zofie and Dominika, two girls of very different temperaments, become friends during hop-picking volunteer work in the summer. Zofie (Jaroslava Schallerová) is serious to the point of reticence and she is delighted with her friendship with Dominika. F...

Set in a 1950s Moravian wine village, an elderly Josef, guided by his quirky life philosophy and humor, recalls key moments from his past. Across nine seasonal vignettes filled with local folklore and customs, he and his fellow elders remain fully en...

In the fifites the 10 year old boy Honza lives with his single mother in Prague. The mother is a dedicated communist in the beginning but she changes her mind when a show trial is held. She speaks about her dissatisfaction with the government and is ...

After a colleague is murdered, insurance worker Kafka gets embroiled in an underground group who are attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society....

Bláža is a bland-looking student who is eager for her first love experience. Even though experienced men are interested in her, she doesn't yet know exactly what her chosen one should look like. The question is, however, whether a shy non-junkie who ...

A quarrel between divorced waitress Mája and her fifteen-year-old son Petr ends with the boy physically attacking his mother, and he is sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents....

Stanek, a truck driver, is working on a large construction site far from Prague. He hasn't been home for several weeks and is tormented by the idea that his wife is unfaithful. So he sets off to Prague underground and has many adventures along the wa...

Dr. Lauren is staying in Prague for a conference and falls in love with Czech writer Jiri Kolmar....

Sudetenland, May 1945. A group of retreating German soldiers capture a group of young female workers, totally deployed in a chemical factory. He wants to use them as hostages during his advance to the American demarcation line. Together with them, th...

Three middle-aged go for a vacation into the mountains with their children. How will they cope with their youngsters every-day needs without their wives? The annual men's ride of three fathers becomes something like a kindergarten in the winter coun...

A comedy concerning a down on his luck bookshop owner with a penchant for women who decides to make some money by pretending to be a waiter and collecting cash from unsuspecting diners....

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 bet...

The film from 1976, a film that is exemplary in its devotion to the canons of normalised cinema, is the work of director Stanislav Strnad. He brought to life the script of an unusual author - the secretary of the SČDU, Arno Kraus - in this psychologi...

Honza and Zuzana are very young husband and wife. They have a little daughter of whom willingly occasionally take care the grandparents and Honza's fifteen-year-old brother Martin. Zuzana continues studying and Honza devotes all weekends as an amateu...

Ondrej lives on a farm outside a small town with his family. One day a group of men arrive at the family's house and the harmonious life they've led so far changes drastically for the worse....

A Dickensian mock-Gothic tale of resourceful children, evil governesses, forged wills, cruel orphanages, and goodness triumphant set against an isolated country house, in an alternate 19th century where savage packs of wolves roam the snowbound count...