ANALYSIS: Sala samobójców (Suicide Room - d. Jan Komasa, 2011) - KVĚTA LUJKOVÁ - After first watching Sala samobójców I felt (as well as many young people do) that it was about me or at least about part of our generation – losers having locked up themselves in imaginary worlds, suffering from a spectrum of psychical disorders starting with social phobia and ending with borderline personality disorder. Howev ...

BOOK REVIEW: William Luhr - Film Noir (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) - MILAN HAIN - Česká verze recenze je dostupná zde / Czech version of the review is available here Recently published book by William Luhr is part of Wiley-Blackwell's New Approaches to Film Genre series which strives to provide fresh and insightful overviews of established film genres (so far, there have been individual books on the western, hor ...

DIRECTOR MARTIN FRIČ: The Trap (1950) – JAROSLAV STUCHLÝ – translated by MARIE MEIXNEROVÁ -  In 1950, Martin Frič (1902–1968) made three new additions to his large filmography. Successful  pre-war and protectorate director, creating in many genres, did sell himself to Bolshevik propaganda: May Events is shock-worker comedy starring Jaroslav Marvan, Steel Town is propagandistic nonsense about steelworkers st ...

DIRECTOR MARTIN FRIČ: Barbora Hlavsová (1942) – BARBORA SLEZÁKOVÁ - translated by MAGDA HRABÁLKOVÁ – Barbora Hlavsová is Frič’s fiftieth sound film. It is based on Jaroslav Havlíček’s film story Glass Hill. The author sent it to a film studio and thus entered the competition for the best story. Karel Steklý adapted it into a script. At first, let us have a brief look at film plot: Vojtěch Hlavsa, head of a ...

DIRECTOR MARTIN FRIČ - The Hordubals (1937) - IVO MICHALÍK - translated by BARBORA GREPLOVÁ -  One glance at Martin Frič’s The Hordubals (1937) and the attention is drawn to the multiplication of the title of Čapek’s novel (although the length of a novella, historians specializing in Čapek’s work treat it as a novel, which is why I follow this in my text) from 1933. This ballad of a man suffering from inner ...

DIRECTOR MARTIN FRIČ – Čapek’s Tales (1947) – JIŘÍ VLADIMÍR MATÝSEK – translated by MARIE MEIXNEROVÁ - One of the most eminent Czechoslovakian director Martin Frič dealt with adaptation of Karel Čapek’s works two times.  For the first time in 1937 in the film Hordubal, adaptation of the first book of Čapek’s “noetic trilogy” Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life. He went back to the author of Dashenka, War ...

DIRECTOR MARTIN FRIČ: Introduction – VĚRA ADINA ŠEFRANÁ - translated by PAVLA STEJSKALOVÁ and MARIE MEIXNEROVÁ - From the young, talented director to the old hand Martin Frič was born on March 29th, 1902, into the family of mechanical engineer, family with strong intellectual background. Since his youth he played guitar, sang and painted. After finishing secondary school, he attended the School of Applied A ...

EXPERIMENTAL – Mark Ther – The Alps in the Morning Sun – MARIE MEIXNEROVÁ Show The Alps in the Morning Sun, “running” on Internet television Artyčok.TV is prepared by Czech videoartist Mark Ther since 2008 is the sentence to begin this article with. Even though this sentence contains every essential fact we wanted to highlight, we are aware of the fact that we owe our readers little explanation and small nu ...

INTERVIEW with animator and illustrator Volker Schlecht - VERONIKA ZÝKOVÁ - Volker Schlecht is a Berlin based animator and illustrator, who created three animated short films, the latest being Germania Wurst (2008), sharp and ironic treat on German history in a nutshell, which got many awards at film festivals. But Volker Schlecht is also an acclaimed illustrator, together with Alexandra Kardinar he illustr ...

INTERVIEW with animator and illustrator Benjamin Arthur – VERONIKA ZÝKOVÁ – Benjamin Arthur is a young California based animator and illustrator, who brought attention to his works by his short film Once Upon a Time in the Woods (2007), in which he rotoscoped his brother, and later by two animations he did for National Public Radio - 3D animated The Billion-Bug Highway (2010) and roto Why Can't We Walk Stra ...