Miroslav Macháček

Jen o rodinných záležitostech

Life in communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s and the punishments for going against the state.

TGM the Liberator

The life of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first elected President of Czechoslovakia following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.

Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself

Pepe and Prengel, returning from war, meet Ester and both fall in love with the girl and live together in a deserted house. Fanatic communist, Zelmira, wants to turn their world upside-down.

Twins at the Zoo

The parents decided to send two twins, Honza, and Martin, on vacation to their grandfather.

Merry Christmas Octopus

Eva and her younger brother Johnny own two sentient octopuses made out of strange matter. Will their parents divorce and ruin Christmas? Will a scientist find a way to use their pets as fuel? Live action film with stop-motion octopuses.

The Octopuses from the Second Floor

While on vacation with their bickering parents, young Eva and her little brother Johnny find in a polluted lake two strange friendly sentient octopuses made of strange material that attracts electricity. They take them as pets.

Wolf's Hole

Eleven disparate adolescents, gathered for a skiing camp at an isolated winter resort, find themselves preyed upon and set against one another by their three mysterious instructors.

The Great Movie Robbery

The film is essentially a feature-length commercial for an exhibition to mark the 40th anniversary of the nationalisation of the Czechoslovak film industry, to be held at the Prague U Hybernu venue. The protagonists of the piece are comedians Oldrich Kaiser and Jirí Lábus, who are set to accept an award from Japanese television representatives at the exhibition. At the same time, five gangsters plot to seize a revolutionary invention devised by professor Suzuki - a super holograph, which enables any figure from television to be transported in the flesh into the real world, and vice-versa.

Scalpel, Please

A psychological drama exploring the notion of the doctor as a moral authority, who within the framework of their everyday work must face questions of life and death. The film is adapted from a novel by Valja Stýblová, in which the author draws upon her personal experiences as a former neurosurgeon. The protagonist of this drama is an ageing professor, based at a Prague neurological clinic, who is haunted by issues concerning his own principles and values, and also by the case of a young patient, Víťa, afflicted with an inoperable tumour.

Shades of Fern

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.

White Cloud Carolin

It's no big secret that twelve-year-old Hannes is in love with his classmate Carolin, who he compares to a beautiful white cloud in the sky. But when Carolin spends most of her time exploring the village's history with Benno, Hannes becomes increasingly jealous of his rival. The only person who is happy about this situation is Kerstin, who is in fact interested in Hannes. In order to impress Carolin, Hannes takes her and several others out for a boat ride in the nearby Bay of Greifswald, but his plan takes a deadly turn as a storm approaches.

Prague – The Restless Heart of Europe

This distinctive documentary portrait of Prague extolls the beauty, significance and spirit of the ancient city adopting modern way of life. The form and content of the film share a common underlining principle. The author doesn't simply list out the sequence of events, but rather approaches them in a broader context of their historic implications and circumstances. The content of the film covers a large period from the pagan times to these days. The facts are grouped under several general headings (paganry, the spread of Christianity, renaissance, baroq and modern times) with allusions to the modern life of Prague and Praguers that has its roots in those times.

The Balad of Mamelouk

Mamluk is an unassuming, handsome young peasant who happens to have come along just in time to save the king from a fatal trap, and as a reward, the king offers him the amount of land he can mark off by walking around in one day but he must return to the starting point before sunset.

Sugar House

In the final days of the Second World War in 1945 Frantisek Pribyl is killed during a shoot-out with the Germans. After the funeral, the widow (Jana Svandová) and her two young sons Martin and Ondra move to her deceased husband's native village at the foot of the Kralický Snezník mountains. Life in the borderlands is far from easy for the lonely woman. The village is almost deserted, food supplies are delayed; the Werwolf (Nazi guerrilla squads) are hiding in the mountains, and shooting is heard from time to time. The elder son Ondra (Michal Dlouhý) is helping out his mother and at the same time absorbing intense new experiences. He meets an old Czech resident Skurek (Lubomír Kostelka), German women working in the forest, soldiers from the engineering units removing the mines, and a young first lieutenant. At night he dreams about his dead father whom he loved very much. This is why he runs away from home when he finds out that the lieutenant is courting his mother.

Love Between the Raindrops

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.

Past na kachnu

Taxi driver Koukal (Miroslav Machácek) is stopped by the police for a routine traffic check. In the boot of his car the police find the body of a naked man. Koukal is arrested even though he claims he knows nothing about it. The case is assigned to Major Mlynár (Milan Sandhaus). The police identify the corpse as that of an Austrian citizen called Mitrik. Koukal has been regularly driving people interested in gambling to a secret gaming den. The police are put onto the gambling den by another taxi driver, who admits that he drove Mitrik there. Mlynár and officer cadet Pecka (Ivan Vyskocil) feign interest in gambling and visit the gaming den incognito.

Concert for the survivors

A picture of generational confrontations between children and parents. A young and ambitious violin virtuoso, Peter, lives in long-lasting conflicts with his father. Only after his death Peter realizes how much he had been hurting his father. Still, not even the tragedy can make a change in his shallow life in stereotype.

Touha Sherlocka Holmese

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.

Kinoautomat

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.

322

A story of a man threatened by a fatal illness evaluating his life (the number 322 in the film title stands for the diagnosis of one kind of cancer). He understands his illness as a form of punishment for his cruel deeds in the 1950s. In the face of reality and his efforts to cleanse himself he hits a barrier of indifference, lack of interest, and individual and collective selfishness. He has to find his own reconciliation with his illness and his past and present life.

The Giants

A blue dwarf and a red dwarf get into a vicious argument. Each ultimately calls upon a matching giant to protect them, with unexpected results.

Case for a Rookie Hangman

Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.

Aesop

This film brings us back to show us the life of the famous ancient sage Aesop, who helped people with his wisdom in their struggle for freedom and happiness.

Revenge

A dialogue between judge and convict, winner and loser, which offers the viewer a reflection on the relativity of guilt, heroism and crime in the world of "isms".

The Valley of the Bees

Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father's properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

Transit Carlsbad

Even in the "enlightened" 60. years filmmakers like to play spies. In the grand-world environment, Luxury hotel in Karlovy Vary the sophisticated charade unfolds, in which several foreign agents interested in the famous Austrian scientist, the discoverer of the artificial protein. Endangered man fortunately never notice danger around him. His protection was entrusted to the mysterious madame Elizabeth, amongst agents famed as the ' 006, in fact, working for the State security... As a parody, perhaps the movie succeeded, but hardly convincing anyone - and this is despite scriptwriting participation of the renowned Jan Procházka.

Searching

Michal's father and his friends are stigmatized by their war experience and the post-war social deformations in which they took part either directly, or watched them cowardly and in silence. They are trying to repress their feelings of guilt and justify their behavior to the young generation with memories of their heroic war feats. Michal, however, does not want to have anything to do with their problems. He subconsciously perceives the unpleasant atmosphere in the family as well as his father's hypocrisy. After one of many quarrels with his father, he runs away from home, determined to go his own way.

The Fifth Horseman Is Fear

In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a doctor-turned-warehouse employee reluctantly agrees to treat a gravely wounded political fugitive, putting himself and everyone living in his building complex in danger.

A Leap In The Dark

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.

Defendant

Managers at the construction of a big hydro plant are accused of having embezzled money.

Ikarie XB 1

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.

Death Is Called Engelchen

Pavel is a Czech partisan fighter in the waning days of the war. Just as peace is declared, Pavel is shot in the spine and sent to the hospital emergency ward. As he fades in and out of consciousness, he recalls the events that led to his participation in the underground. Holding German occupation commander Engelchen responsible for all the horrors and deprivations heaped upon his comrades, Pavel is kept alive by the possibility of recovering and exacting vengeance upon the Nazi officer - no matter how long it takes.

The Devil's Trap

A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil.