Czech “Oscar” films

Czechoslovakia 1965 / direction : Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos / 128 minutes / Oscar Award 1966 for Best Foreign Language Film, Oscar Award 1966 nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role ... The 1965 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, The Shop on Main Street (Obch o Na Korze) stars Josef Kroner as Tono Briko, a slothful Slovakian carpenter. The time is World War II, and the occupying Nazis are nationalizing all Jewish-owned businesses. To please his ambitious family, Tono takes the job of "Aryan comptroller" for a rundown button shop managed by an elderly Jewish woman (Ida Kaminska). He realizes that his new job won't bring much in the way of money; the old woman, deaf as a post, realizes nothing, not even that a war is on.

Czechoslovakia 1966 / direction : Jiří Menzel / 92 minutes / Oscar Award 1968 for Best Foreign Language Film ... Czech director Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (Ostre sledovane vlaky) was the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967. In the story, based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel of the same name, Vaclav Neckar plays a Czech railroad worker during the Nazi occupation. He undergoes several philosophical changes as he becomes attracted to the Czech underground. Determining at last that his own existence hardly matters in the scheme of things, Neckar volunteers for a suicide mission.

Czechoslovakia 1965 / direction : Miloš Forman / 88 minutes / Oscar Award 1967 nomination for Best Foreign Language Film ... Out in the Czech countryside, a shoe factory owner petitions the People's Army to station a division of soldiers in his town, where the women outnumber the men sixteen to one. The arrival of the troops is greeted with great excitement, but the girls in the town are disappointed to see that the men are older reservists, and not the strapping young men they'd envisioned. Still, when a band plays at the local pub, the girls show up to be ogled by the older men, many of whom are married. A trio of reservists sends a bottle of wine to Andula (Hana Brejchova), Marie (Marie Salacova), and Jana (Jana Novakova), and the girls argue over whether or not to acknowledge the gesture.

Czechoslovakia, Italy 1967 / direction : Miloš Forman / 71 minutes / Oscara Award 1969 nomination for Best Foreign Language Film ... Firemen's Ball was Czechoslovakian director Milos Forman's final film in his home country; he was scouting locations in Paris when the Russians moved their tanks into Prague in 1968 causing Forman to decide to remain an expatriate. Because of the supercharged political climate of the era, critics read all sorts of allegory and hidden meanings into the Firemen's Ball. Other critics simply accepted the film as the slapsticky tale of a disastrous small-town celebration in honor of a retiring fire chief, and laughed accordingly.

Czechoslovakia 1985 / direction : Jiří Menzel / 98 minutes / Oscara Award 1987 nomination for Best Foreign Language Film ... Jiri Menzel of Closely Watched Trains fame directed the sweet little Czechoslovakian comedy/drama My Sweet Little Village. The life's blood of the titular community is a collective farm. Marian Labuda is the farm's truck driver, and also the partner-protector of Janos Ban, who is the village idiot. Like everyone else in the village, Labuda has watched out for Ban and covered up his mistakes, but in recent weeks the situation has become intolerable and Labuda demands a new partner.

Czechoslovakia 1991 / direction : Jan Svěrák / 97 minutes / Oscara Award 1992 nomination for Best Foreign Language Film ... Ten-year-old Eda lives in Czechoslovakia. It is 1945, and he goes to school with some boys who are so mischievous that they have caused their previous teacher a nervous breakdown. She is replaced by a tough disciplinarian who administers frequent beatings. He also brags that he played an important role in the resistance to the Nazis. Despite this, the boys take to him, and he makes a success of his job on that front. He has a big problem, however, in that he can't keep from pursuing almost anyone in a skirt whose looks appeal to him.

Czech Republic 1996 / direction : Jan Svěrák / 105 minutes / Oscar Award 1997 for Best Foreign Film ... 55-year-old Louka (Zdenek Sverak) is a gifted musician in Czechoslovakia who once made a good living playing in the State Symphony Orchestra. However, he has little use for the government, and after putting a playfully insulting statement on a government form, he's been banished from official music making. He ekes out a living by giving private lessons, painting gravestones with gold leaf, and performing at funerals. Louka also likes to chase younger women, a surprisingly number of whom are more than happy to be caught.

Czech Republic 2000 / direction : Jan Hřebejk / 117 minutes / Oscar Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001... A man and a woman battle with deceit and infidelity as they struggle to survive Hitler's fascist regime in this period drama. Marie and Josef Cizek (Anna Siskova and Boleslav Polivka) are a couple living in a small Czechoslovakian village during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Marie and Josef's marriage is showing signs of strain as a result of the political tensions surrounding them, as well as frustrations over their inability to have children due to Josef's sterility. When a neighboring Jewish family is deported and sent to Theresenstadt, their teenage son David (Csongor Kassai) manages to escape, and the Cizeks warily agree to hide him in their home.

Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria 2003 / direction : Ondřej Trojan / 142 minutes / Oscar Award 2004 nomination for Best Foreign Language Film ... Czech filmmaker Ondrej Trojan directs the period war drama Zelary, based on the novella Jozova Hanule by Kveta Legátová. During WWII, nurse Eliska (Anna Geislerová) is part of a secret resistance movement with her lover, surgeon Richard Littner (Ivan Trojan). When he is discovered, Eliska is forced to leave the hospital in order to hide from the Nazis. Her colleague Dr. Chladek (Jan Hrusínský) sends her off with mountain man Joza ( György Cserhalmi), who had been a patient in the hospital.

Ireland 2006 / direction : John Carney / 83 minutes / Oscar Award 2008 for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song - Glen Hansard a Markéta Irglová ... A Dublin-based busker and vacuum-cleaner repairman enters into a fruitful relationship with a piano playing florist in a toe-tapping "video album" directed by John Carney and featuring a cast comprised entirely of professional musicians. He (Glen Hansard of the Frames) was a six-stringed street musician. She (Markéta Irglová) was a flower woman who couldn't afford to purchase a piano of her own. One day, after admiring the musician's songs and asking if he would take a look at her broken vacuum, the flower-pushing piano player discovers that she shares a remarkable sonic rapport with the mechanically savvy guitarist.