This film is about life of a family, which lived in Prague since since 1968 to 1980. Father of the family comes from Ukraine and so every year someone from Ukraine to visit this family and to buy something more better than is in Ukraine. As the times go by, the friens of family live in Austria. And now for change the family visit "a better life" in west Europe and they found out how it is to be something second-rate.
A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.
The theatre director encounters the disinterest and irresponsibility of the acting troupe, whose members are scheming and looking for side income. The tired and sick artist wants to finish his work at any cost.
At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the idea of making an abridged version of the footage for cinema, he had to not only rebuild the storyline but also dub it into Czech. However, the result was only an illustrative puzzle, describing the various stages of the hero's turbulent life.
Young prisoner Jan, nicknamed Roughboy (Petr Cepek), tries to commit suicide. He was imprisoned for a fight in which he injured a functionary of the National Committee and for stealing material but actually by the blame for this crime was pinned on him by the road-builders in whose group he worked. The prison doctor knows that Jan is an emotionally deprived person who never knew his parents and spent all his childhood - except one year with foster-parents - in orphanages, homes for youth and reform schools. He arranges a five-day holiday for Jan, who wants to find his mother's grave.
Petr Čepek was a Czech actor associated with The Drama Club in Prague. His final film was Faust, directed by Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer. Cepek attended the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) along with many notable Czech actors of the time, before appearing in Ostrava’s first theater, DPB until 1965. After joining with fellow colleagues in Prague’s Činoherní Klub, where he contributed to the formation of numerous famous theatre productions such as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Gogo’s Revizor (The Government Inspector). Čepek turned to politics in the late 1980s, participating in political rallies and negotiations before returning to the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) to teach until his death in 1994. Čepek was honored posthumously for his double role in the Švankmajers film Faust.
By browsing this website, you accept our cookies policy.