Tragicomedy that revolves around a single joke: a professor, who is also an unrepentant ladies' man, is sentenced to six years hard labor for an irreverant postcard he sends to a woman he is trying to seduce. A stunning vision of life in Czechoslovakia during the Stalinist 50s.

16-year-old Petr has just started his first job--patrolling for shoplifters in a grocery store. An unsure young man, he is now an agent of the established order, yet he looks on complacently when a stout woman steals some candy. His father, a part time bandmaster, is a petty dictator--Petr resists playing audience to his habitual old-school monologues. His father lacks any direction for the future and Petr is confused and adrift. The disappointments...

"A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement's directors. Based on the stories by the legendary writer, Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally chilling to the caustically observant to the casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world"--Container. Smrt pana Baltazara = Mr. Baltazar's death: A group of aimless, nostalgia-inclined...

Sedmikrasky = Daises: Two teenage girls decide that since the world is spoiled they will be spoiled as well; accordingly they embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world about them. O slavnosti a hostech = A report on the party and guests: A group of happy picnickers are accosted by a group of strangers led by a bullying sadist who has an unbreakable hold over his followers. After he interrogates one of them,...