Jan Klusák

Cimrman in the World of Music (2006)

The original score was in a sorry state: the notes were carelessly marked, the lines were broken, and the paper was covered in smudges. I took the utmost care in reconstructing it: I erased the smudges, traced the lines with a ruler, blackened the bellies ...

The Beggar's Opera (1991)

Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned v ...

The Seventh Day, the Eighth Night (1990)

An allegory set in an archetypal Czech village, it tells the story of what happens when a series of mysterious events take place, including the disappearance of the station master. While everything has a rational explanation, collective paranoia takes over ...

Nothing Really Happened (1989)

An overprotective mother plagues her daughter out of guilt over unintentionally scarring her daughter's cheek. ...

Dimensions of Dialogue (1983)

Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society. ...

Plaché příběhy (1982)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1982)

In this animated version of Edgar Allan Poe's story, a traveller arrives at the Usher mansion to find that the sibling inhabitants are living under a mysterious family curse. The brother's senses have become painfully acute, while his sister has become nea ...

Mateji, proc te holky nechtejí? (1981)

Matěj Hůrka, a teenage bricklayer's apprentice, a young man who is delicate in matters of love, lives with his grandmother in a country cottage. He struggles with love problems, but waits in vain for some advice as his vivacious grandmother remarries an ...

Bratři Karamazovi (1981)

In 1976, the Czech New Wave philosopher and director Evald Schorm came to the Na zábradlí Theatre. He stayed there for twelve years, until his death. He raised a generation of actors who were aware of their own personalities. In The Brothers Karamazov, t ...

Macbeth (1981)

A tragedy of great and bloody conflicts, turbulent emotions and clashes, centred on a couple torn by passion – Macbeth and his wife, who persuades him to seize the throne. Macbeth murders the king, but must fight for power against the king's descendants. ...

Hon na kočku (1980)

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 at m ...

Tím pádem (1980)

Amadeus Macků, the village postman, is an incorrigible dreamer obsessed with the desire to fly. He invents and builds his own hovercrafts, making himself a thorn in the side of his hillbilly neighbours. The group of pub chatterers are particularly annoyed ...

Prince Copperslick's Thirteenth Chamber (1980)

A meat-eating monarch marries a vegetarian princess. ...

Město mé naděje (1979)

Jan Kačer became known primarily as an actor, but he also took up film directing several times - not very successfully. Based on someone else's script, he made a committed, building story: it tells the story of an experienced engineer who is commissioned ...

Královské usínání (1975)

What I Haven't Told the Prince (1975)

This original adaptation of Oscar Wilde's sad, socially conscious fairy tale, The Happy Prince, hinges on the conflict between fact and dream, reality and poetry. The contrast is reinforced by the film's visuals, confronting modern art with Gustave Doré's ...

Hliněný vozíček (1973)

Otevřený kruh (1973)

The television production captures the last decade of the life of the now world-renowned painter Karel Purkyně (1834 - 1868) and his struggle for the possibility of creative expression. After studying in Paris, he returns to Prague. He is not recognized, ...

Kasař (1973)

A meeting between the famous post-war safecracker Arnošt Šimerda and "his" inspector František Nový, who put him behind bars 25 years ago. In the meantime, Mr. Šimerda has become a responsible guard at the Karlovy Vary porcelain factory, where, parado ...

Five Men and One Heart (1971)

In modern hospitals are carried out intensive cardiac surgery. Daily operations individually comments attendant Cajthaml ... Stylized ,, dream "scene are combined with documentary footage of actual operations, which were filmed at the University Hospital i ...

Dogs and People (1971)

The first short story "Naked in the Thorns" tells the story of a man whose clothes were taken away by a dog during his bath in the river. In the second short story "Games of Love", a retired professor paints a biblical scene of Susan and the old man. In th ...

Podezření (1970)

The story of four men who were arrested in a random raid on a small-town hotel during the Nazi occupation and taken to a school classroom. They don't know why or for how long. They are waiting for interrogation and, fearing possible accusation and punishme ...

Gedanken eines unkoncentrierten Violinstudenten (1970)

A string quartet of students is about to rehearse a new piece when everything is drowned out by the repeated loud call for a general mobilisation... ...

Sochařka z Poličky (1970)

Falkenštejn (1969)

Prague Nights (1969)

A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius, lonely and looking for a night's diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde. In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In "The ...

The End of a Priest (1969)

A verger, who likes to dress as a priest, is invited, by one of the villagers, to be the pastor at a vacant church. The atheist teacher resents the pastor, and tries to embarrass him in various ways, including being caught with the local girl, Majka. ...

The Limping Devil (1968)

A baleful limping man walks through Prague. He is Asmodeus (Juraj Herz), the fiend of lustfulness, entertaining himself by putting together by magic couples of lovers. He only fails at the swimming pool. Zuzana (Jana Sulcová), the good-looking blonde, ign ...

Portrét (1968)

Piknik (1968)

Pacific Island - 1945. Five American soldiers were sent to reconnoiter the Japanese rear. Surrounded by unpredictable jungle and terrible heat, they have been moving in unknown territory for over two weeks in order to find the enemy. Commander Grackmiller, ...

Revenge (1968)

Film based on the story by the French writer Gérard de Nerval. A terrifying story that takes us to Paris in the time of the Three Musketeers. The magician Conin enchants evil that afterwards destroys him and a shy love-lorn young man named Eustach. ...

Láska jako trám (1968)

An elderly couple is planning a big family gathering. The husband is thinking about what he can do to make his wife happy. While walking around town, he meets an old friend and they have a few drinks together. After a dose of alcohol, the man trades his br ...

The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)

A troupe of young women on post-apocalyptic earth are lead around by a mistress born before the war, eventually stumbling into the company of a lonely old man. ...

Martyrs of Love (1967)

Three loosely-connected tales that represent different aspects of love: temptation, dreams, and adventure. ...

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1967)

Engineer Jan Sebek (Jan Kacer) is undergoing treatment in a mental home after his unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. His therapist, via discussions both with the patient and with people who know him, tries to find out what made the young and seemingly ...

Reflection (1966)

A leading director of the Czech film renaissance provides a philosophical meditation on life and death, set amidst complex hospital apparatus and the sadness, hope, or resignation of the patients. Existentialist rather than optimist, the approach is one of ...

Searching (1966)

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 th ...

Pearls of the Deep (1966)

A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle races results in drunkenness, long-winded discussions, and death; two elderly men create false biographies; insurance agents visit an eccentric painter/goat ...

Srub (1966)

It is the depths of winter and in the middle of a desolate landscape on a snowy slope stands a log cabin, inhabited by an old man. The man puts his last log into his stove and the warmth of the fire visibly delights him. He rocks his rocking chair energeti ...

Courage for Every Day (1965)

A passionate communist worker is discouraged by the changing political climate and the failure of his peers to live up to his ideals. ...

Psalm (1965)

A synagogue service in Bohemia, where the Torah scrolls are ceremoniously taken out and read, intercut with images of a Jewish cemetery. ...

The Cry (1964)

While a woman is in the hospital preparing to deliver her child, her husband has all day to reflect upon his wife and their relationship. As he tends to his job as a television repairman, Slavek fondly remembers how he first met Ivana and the days they spe ...

Hledá se toxin X (1963)

Railwaymen (1963)

A short documentary about the work of railwaymen and life on the railway. ...

Ceiling (1962)

The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly sub ...

Jejich den (1962)

Stromy a lidé (1962)

In creating the film, Evald Schorm and Jan Špáta took full advantage of the possibilities offered by the Cinemascope format and created a visual poem about the beauty and fate of trees and the simple life of people in the mountains. Dynamically slow, art ...

Caterwauling (1960)

In a rare instance of literary adaptation, Chytilová was inspired by Franz Kafka's writings. Mr. K stashes stolen jewelry away at home and seldom allows his wife to wear it. A nosy neighbour, Mr. B, drops in. A cat observes it all. ...

Naughty Young People: Chytilová, Kučera, Krumbachová (2012)

Documentary about the making of Vera Chytilová's film DAISIES ...

I Served the King of England (2007)

Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the inter-war period. Jan Dítě, a young and clever waiter who wants to become a millionaire, comes to the conclusion that to achieve his ambitious goal he must be diligent, listen and observe as much as he can, be always di ...

Bohemia Docta or the Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy) (2000)

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can't find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations ...

A znovu Žebrácká opera (1996)

Two different productions of Václav Havel's Beggar's Opera reveal the political dynamics of Czechoslovakia before and after the velvet revolution. ...

Variations of a Theme by Gustav Mahler (1982)

Documentary short about the title composer, born in what was called "Czechoslovakia" when the film was made. ...

Koncert pro mantinely (1977)

A musical and entertaining féerie based on the contrast between the world of classical music with its musicians and the world of sports with hockey players on the ice and fans in the stands. ...

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different ...

Fruit of Paradise (1970)

An experimental retelling of the story of Adam and Eve which then progresses into an allegorical depiction of the loss of innocence. ...

Prague Nights (1969)

A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius, lonely and looking for a night's diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde. In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In "The ...

Martyrs of Love (1967)

Three loosely-connected tales that represent different aspects of love: temptation, dreams, and adventure. ...

Daisies (1966)

Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them. ...

The Party and the Guests (1966)

A group of the bourgeois head for a prominent figure's birthday party. As they venture through the woods and have a picnic, they're suddenly surrounded by some suspicious strangers. ...