Movies: Otakar Vávra

In the 1600s, an overzealous clergy hauls innocent women in front of tribunals, forces them to confess to imaginary witchery, and engages in brutal torture and persecution of their subjects....

In early 20th century Czechoslovakia, a gravely ill chemist recalls his discovery of a powerful explosive and how it landed in the hands of anarchists....

A lyrical story about first love, death and disappointment, based on a poem of the same title....

A fiction piece centered around the Czech resistance to the Nazis....

Zdenek Pešánek created the first public kinetic sculpture, for the power station in Prague. This short experimental film focuses on a kinetic sculpture by Zdenek Pešánek. For a period of eight years it issued beams of light from the outside wall of a...

Venice Film Festival 1939...

Jan Hus is a 1954 Czechoslovak film directed by Otakar Vávra. It is the first part of the "Hussite Revolutionary Trilogy", one of the most famous works of the Czechoslovak director, completed with Jan Žižka (1955) and Proti všem (Against All Odds, 19...

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A painting of a girl from another time comes to life for it's buyer in this costume comedy....

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological...

The plot begins in the Soviet Union showing first efforts to establish the Czechoslovak legion in 1942. The film also shows the assassination of Heydrich and the subsequent annihilation of Lidice. The main topis of the film is battles with German tro...

A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor....

A remake of Vávra's 1948 atomic age thriller Krakatit....

A 13-minute documentary film depicting life in Prague....

The second part of the revolutionary Hussite trilogy takes place in the years 1419-1420....

An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel....

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After the battle of Sudoměř the Hussite teaching spreads through the whole country and people start leaving their homes to help build the fortification of Tábor. Prague citizens request help against the army of Zikmund. The Hussite army with Jan Žižk...

On 20th of April 1945 the Soviet army launches its attack on Berlin. The end has come for Nazi Germany and Hitler decides to commit suicide. In Prague K.H. Frank (Nazi Secretary of State and Chief of police in the Protectorate of Bohemia a Moravia) d...

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...