Czech Films: “Autumn Spring” (and More) this Winter
Warm up with these free Czech movies, Monday afternoons, at Toronto Reference Library.
Monday, January 8th
Vratne Lahve = Empties (2007)
Josef, a literature teacher, is pushed into retirement. But instead of a peaceful family life, he chooses a part-time job in a supermarket at the bottle-return counter. The exciting new world that he creates there however leaves less and less room for his wife, Eliska, and she of course has no intention of getting used to it. 1h 44m
Monday, January 15th
Babí léto = Autumn Spring (2001)
Terminal prankster Frantisek Hána refuses to grow up and take certain responsibilities, despite his wife Emilie's constant badgering to do so. Even his own looming death won't phase him, but how far is too far? 1h 40m
Monday, January 22nd
Horem Pádem = Up and Down (2005)
Milan and Goran smuggle illegal immigrants. One night, they discover that one of their passengers has left a baby behind, launching a chain of events crossing classes and continents. 1h 28m
Monday, February 5th
A nurse and her surgeon-lover are part of a resistance movement in 1940s Czechoslovakia. When they are discovered, she must find a place to hide and a former patient from a remote backward mountain village agrees to marry her. 2h 30m
Monday, February 12th
Obsluhoval Isem Anglického Krále = I Served the King of England (2008)
This is twentieth century Czech history through the eyes of Jan Dítě, a young provincial waiter who wants to become a millionaire. He's short in height, but high in ambition. He’s also utterly amoral, but the world is worse than he is. 2h
Monday, February 26th
Stestí = Something Like Happiness (2006)
A trio of friends residing in an urban Czech housing project finds that happiness can come from the place where you least expect it in this quirky and heartfelt drama. 1h 40m
Monday March 5th
Frank Louka is a down-on-his-luck concert musician who agrees to a bogus marriage with a Russian woman for money. When she takes off and leaves behind her five-year-old son, Louka must take care of the boy. Both will become good, inseparable friends. Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign language film. 1h 45m
All films have English subtitles.
2 PM, Hinton Learning Theatre
Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street
5 thoughts on “Czech Films: “Autumn Spring” (and More) this Winter”
Brent could you please comment on Up and Down. The movie seemed very disjointed and the tone changes very jarring..I’d like your responses to it. Thank you.
Thanks for your comments!
[For everyone else I should mention SPOILERS!]:
For me the film is about bigotry and how it isn’t restricted to one class or another. In each of the segments, the characters who are acting out in a bigoted way are usually reacting to something else that’s going on in their lives.
The other theme was how everyone is connected and (under the right circumstances) capable of doing someone else a good turn. So the young hood, hawking stolen goods at the beginning, is the fast food worker who lets the family know about the “thieves.”
Appearances in this film are often *very* deceiving. So the smallest gesture can end up causing major reversals in someone else’s life.
If you’re in for the next screening, I’ll look forward to discussing it with you. In the meantime, IMDB has some good capsule reviews:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401488/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
Hope to see you next week!
Thanks for the insights Brent,,my biggest takeaways were how horrifying the soccer fans are and that the director seemed to suggest the only place to avoid bigotry was the back of beyond in Australia!
Thanks for a great series Brent … varied in every sense of the word. Will miss your enthusiasm , knowledge and smiling host
Thanks so much!
Had a great time with this series, especially hearing everyone’s reactions.
I’ll be around to help out on some of the upcoming series, so hope to see you there!