Czech and Slovak Cultural Center

We would like to bring to your attention that six outstanding Czech and Slovak films will be featured at the upcoming Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival April 15-30, 2010.  All of these films will be shown in St. Anthony Main Theatre (115 Main Street SE, Minneapolis, tel. 612-331-4723).  We recommend purchasing tickets in advance as they might sell out (tickets can be purchased online on the Festival website www.mspfilmfest.org).  The Czech and Slovak Cultural Center of Minnesota is the co-organizer and co-sponsor of the Czech and Slovak film screenings.

Shameless / Nestyda (In Czech with English subtitles; Director Jan Hrebejk)

Friday, April 23, 2010 – 9:20pm

Monday, April 26, 2010 – 5:45pm

What happens when a man falls out of love with his wife? In Oskar’s case, he turns on the bedside lamp and suddenly realizes how big her nose looks against the bedroom wall! In this single shot, a masterly stroke so simple and yet so scaldingly ironic, Czech director Jan Hrebejk accomplishes the impossible. He tells the story of an unhappy marriage, complete with imminent demise, in one image: the husband reduced to a detached observer, his spouse a literal shadow of her former self, and their future up against the wall. “I like to explore national embarrassments,” Hrebejk once said in an interview with Time magazine, and it seems he meant it.

Oskar (Jirí Machácek), a popular TV weather forecaster, suddenly wakes up to an altered sense of identity: rather than belonging to easygoing wife Zuzana (a bewildered Simona Babcáková), he feels he ought to belong to the whole wide world – hence the national embarrassment. His first entanglement is with babysitter Kocicka (Eva Kerekéšová), a lean teenybopper who’s more attached to her pet turtle than her older lover – at least until he accidentally smothers it in the dryer. Next in line is mature pop icon Nora (Emília Vašáryová), who’s about to teach him a thing or two about freedom: the more people you let in, the more alone you end up feeling.

Cooking History / Ako sa varia dejiny (Various languages with English subtitles; Director Peter Keres)

Baluty Ghetto / Ghetto jménem Baluty (In Czech with English subtitles; Director Pavel Štingl)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 – 3:45pm

Thursday, April 29, 2010 – 4:40pm

Before World War II, Baluty was a feared crime-ridden neighborhood in the Polish city of Ludtz. Immediately after occupying Poland, the Nazis established the infamous ghetto which housed more than 200,000 Jews awaiting starvation and death. Today,  it is a poor, working-class district as new residents struggle daily to make their way facing very different adversaries: poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and violence.

Returning for a look at the once-notorious district where as a child she managed to survive four horrid years, a Czech woman sits in the back of a taxi, smelling the same cruel streets again as director Štingl and cameraman Mirek Janek investigate Baluty via interviews, unique photos from the distant past, rare archival footage, and with the memories of fellow witnesses, whose lives, in turn, endured the same cruelties of history. Of 5,000 Jews from the Czech transports, she was one of only 271 survivors.

Both a haunting essaycommemorating this marginalized place as well as a vérité report of  how a ghetto-ized but a proud Polish working class remembers its own history. Stingl is a prizewinning documentary director,screenwriter and producer specializing in political films. Janek, whose film experience with his editor/wife Tonica, took off in Minneapolis as a Czech refugee making films here in the Eighties, managed to capture some remarkable off-camera scenes of young street hoods as part of this film.

Sunday, April 18, 2010 – 7:30pm

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 – 4:00pm

Director Peter Kerekes has enlisted a platoon of army cooks from all over Europe to inform viewers about the major European conflicts of the 20th century. This film gives voice to the cooks of the major European forces who recount fascinating tales that educate and entertain. Cooking History functions both as a fascinating lesson in the wartime kitchen and a pleasurable glimpse of some of its most animated characters.

Director Peter Kerekes provides entertaining sociological insights via powerfully staged interviews with a baker’s dozen of military cooks, plus Marshal Tito’s own personal taster. Structured as separate episodes that consider conflicts such as WWII; the Russian invasions of Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Chechnya; the Franco-Algerian war; and the Balkan conflicts, Kerekes lets his animated and articulate subjects hold court in monologues. Through their personal stories the preparation of food becomes a metaphor for battle strategy.

Osadné (playing with short film Turbodiesel) (In Slovak, Czech and Rusyn with English subtitles; Director Marko Skop)

Saturday, April 17, 2010 – 2:45pm

Saturday, April 24, 2010 – 5:20pm

In the humorous observational documentary Osadné the long serving mayor and an Orthodox priest of the titular village are seeking solutions to secure the survival of their community, which appears to be disappearing fast.

The village of Osadné lies on the eastern border of the European Union. Local Orthodox priest Peter Soroka has buried fifty people in five years and baptized only two children. Soroka’s civilian counterpart is Mayor Ladislav Mikuláško, a politican who has been the village VIP for four decades. These local patriots decide to take the future of Osadné into their own hands and, with the help of activist Fedor Vico, seek help from the authorities.

In his “document-toury movie,” Marko Škop follows the protagonists on a journey to the European Parliament in Brussels where he witnesses their efforts to involve a friendly European deputy in strengthening the tourist industry in order to save it. Similar to his previous film Other Worlds (Iné svety), the director is concerned about the authenticity of the “non-globalized” individual, whom he here perceives far more in the context of his community, and confronts with the world beyond the borders of his native village.

Turbodiesel (playing with film Osadné) (In Czech with English subtitles; Director Vojtěch Moravec)

Saturday, April 17, 2010 – 2:45pm

Saturday, April 24, 2010 – 5:20pm

Turbodiesel is a short film about a man who has chosen to limit his living space to just a few cubic meters. Within those self-imposed limitations, he is able to move about as he pleases. Having decided to live in a domicile most consider to be a mode of transport, this man has transformed his car into a bedroom, kitchen, and living room. He has made himself a home identifiable by a license plate rather than an address or a zip code.

El Paso (In Czech with English subtitles; Director Zdenek Tyc)

Sunday, April 25, 2010 – 6:55pm

Thursday, April 29, 2010 – 4:15pm

Based on a true story, El Paso puts Vera, a widowed welfare mother with a brood of seven kids she is in danger of losing, at the center of a turf war between an ambitious young lawyer anxious to impress her boss with a pro bono project, and an unorthodox social worker.

The Horvth family is a Romani family with seven children, and the story begins with the tragic death of the father. His wife, Vera, is suddenly in a fight with the authorities, determined to keep her large family together at all costs, but she is hopelessly ill-prepared for the task. They are evicted from their home and her case–Vera versus the city–finds its way to a young, ambitious lawyer. She doesn’t know the world of the Romani, nor is she particularly interested in it.

Initially she takes the case as a springboard for her career. Despite her prejudices, incomprehension and sometimes Vera herself, she doesn’t abandon the case. Luckily she is not the only one who sides with the family. There is a social worker whose attempts to help the Horvths are also motivated by his entirely private interest in the attractive lawyer.