
Václav Havel
Actor · 1936 – 2011 · Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]
Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December 1992 and then as the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs.
Movies19
Movie5.6ComedyDramaA bitter sweet comedy that follows a highly appointed Chancellor who set to step down from his position after years of service to his country. With just two last days left to enjoy his palatial villa before he is finally evicted, his situation gradually goes from bad to worse.
Movie7.3MusicDocumentaryWith the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.
Zappa
2020 · 69 votes
Movie7.4MusicDocumentaryUtilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.
Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words
2016 · 27 votes
Movie6.0DocumentaryInspired by the idea that the greatest gift one generation can give to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, 'Wisdom' seeks to create a record of a group of people over the age of 65 who have all made their mark on the world.
Wisdom
2008 · 2 votes
Movie5.3DocumentaryThe film Mečiar is the confession of the young director Tereza Nvotová about Vladimír Mečiar and the influence that this politician had on Slovak society, but also on the life of Tereza herself. When the totalitarian communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Tereza was one year old. The leaders of the Gentle Revolution then decided to hold an audition for the Minister of the Interior, to which Vladimír Mečiar, an unknown business lawyer from the Slovak countryside at the time, applied. After success in bankruptcy, Vladimír Mečiar reaches the political top, from where he rules the country with a series of questionable practices. Against the background of events such as the division of Czechoslovakia or the kidnapping of the son of the president of the Slovak Republic, Tereza and her peers relive their childhood.
Movie8.0DocumentaryVera Cáslavská, the most successful Czechoslovak sportswoman and the fourth most successful Olympic sportswoman globally, won seven gold and four silver medals. After her 1968 Mexico City Olympics victory, she became the second most popular woman after Jacqueline Kennedy. In 1968, she signed the 2000 Words Manifesto, which she never retracted. Despite her fame, she faced a troubled life due to political issues, marriage, and family tragedy. Her story reflects Czech society during both communist and democratic regimes, where she was active in the civil sphere. She views her sports career as fleeting fame compared to her challenging life. Now 68, 42 years after her sports career, she remains admired in the Czech Republic and Japan. Her life is a unique chapter in Czech history.
Věra 68
2012 · 2 votes
Movie7.8DocumentaryThe documentary explores the presidency of Václav Havel, a poet who unexpectedly became president. The film, starting in 1992, captures Havel’s experiences after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a significant defeat for him as he had campaigned for its continuation. Despite political opposition and accusations of responsibility for the breakup, Havel runs for president of the new Czech Republic. The film, a unique document, was Koutecký’s most important project, continued by Janek after Koutecký’s death in 2006.
- Movie10.0Documentary
The life of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first elected President of Czechoslovakia following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.
Movie7.4Hammer & Tickle: The Communist Joke Book is a 2006 propaganda documentary film about "jokes" under the Soviet Union.
Hammer & Tickle
2007 · 5 votes
MovieDocumentaryDocumentary about Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska.
Movie7.5DocumentaryA moving account, in his own words, of the personal life and work of the brilliant Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman (1932-2018): his tragic childhood, his major contribution to the cultural movement known as the Czech New Wave, his exile in Paris, his troubled days in New York, his rise to stardom in Hollywood; a complete existence in the service of cinema.
Forman vs. Forman
2019 · 15 votes
Movie7.7MusicDocumentaryAn incredible retracing of the evolution of Reed's remarkable career over three decades. Filled with interviews with Reed, his friends and some of the major artists influenced by Reed including David Bowie, David Byrne, Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega, Dave Stewart, Philip Glass and more. Production Notes, Biographies, Discography, Scene Access, Screen Test, Rare Velvet Footage
Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart
1998 · 3 votes
- MovieDocumentaryHistory
Divadlo Svoboda
2011
Movie9.0DocumentaryHistoryA gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.
Movie7.0DocumentaryThis quirky documentary follows Vaclav Havel on an eye-opening journey across his native Czechoslovakia in the days before he became president of the Czech Republic. A leading playwright, essayist, intellectual and political dissident in 1985, Havel decides to explore the limits of the secret police by traveling and visiting a variety of friends. Along the way, he's thrown in jail twice and followed by hundreds of undercover cops.
Movie6.5DocumentaryA provocative snapshot of the world we live in. It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head” we set out to follow that fishy odor. What we found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.
I am Fishead
2011 · 4 votes
Movie7.2DramaComedyThe movie is based on the narrative of a Czech multimillionaire who achieved success not by stripping companies, making crooked deals and crony-ism, but by blazing his own trail like Schweikesque self-made man. He realizes early on that he has nobody but himself to rely on. During the totalitarian regime of the 80s, he ambles along his oddball path and then experiences the Velvet Revolution atypically, too - in an asylum amidst nut-cases. After the Revolution, he really gets rolling. To Germany and back. To prison and back. To China and back. The intriguing and endless opportunities afforded by the Internet eventually blossom into virtual prosperity. The hero has everything and is even planning a highly unorthodox family. A happy ending is nigh, until everything goes up in smoke, of course...
Czech Made Man
2011 · 10 votes
MovieDocumentarySpotlights the Velvet Underground's 1993 reunion tour of Europe, interspersing footage of the band's Paris concert and interviews with the members of the group. Concerts in Prague and Berlin included.
- MovieDocumentary
Documentary about the film academy in Prague and the Czech Film in 1965.
Series4
TV6.6DramaComedyAmerican Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
American Playhouse
1982 · 8 votes
TV8.7Talk ShowIn-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered as famous personalities from all walks of life talk about the highs and lows in their lives.
HARDtalk
1997 · 3 votes
- TVReality
Goldene Henne
1995
TV6.0DocumentaryThe Lost World of Communism is a three-part British documentary series which examines the legacy of Communism twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Produced by Peter Molloy and Lucy Hetherington, the series takes a retrospective look at life behind the Iron Curtain between 1945 and 1989, focusing on three countries in the Eastern Bloc - East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Through film and television footage and the personal recollections of those who lived in these countries, the series offers a glimpse of what daily life was like during the years of Communist rule. The Lost World of Communism debuted on BBC Two on Saturday 14 March 2009 at 9:00pm. There is also a book which accompanies the series.
The Lost World of Communism
2009 · 6 votes