After the battle of Sudoměř the Hussite teaching spreads through the whole country and people start leaving their homes to help build the fortification of Tábor. Prague citizens request help against the army of Zikmund. The Hussite army with Jan Žižka in the lead make their way towards Prague....
How do you wake up a sleeping puppet? Made by Trnka in collaboration with actor and puppeteer Josef Pehr, this winsome mix of live action and puppet play is enchanting entertainment for the youngest of viewers.
A barrel organ grinder meets the devil on a mysterious moonlit night in this haunted-house fable, which showcases Trnka’s atmospheric use of sound to conjure a macabre mood.
Hurvinek cannot go to a circus because he injured himself when sliding down the stair rail. He daydreams that he is an acrobat riding a scooter and an animal-trainer taming beasts. (MUBI)
Trnka brings to life a surrealist circus of tightrope-walking fish, musical monkeys, balancing bears, and high-flying acrobatics in this whimsical feat of cutout animation made in collaboration with leading Czech painters of the era.
The passion for high speed can nowadays almost be seen in the new-born. The film shows that such passion, if not controlled, is self-destructing and even suicidal. At least this is the way Trnka presents it in this satiric story. —kratkyfilm.cz
A poor fisherman catches the golden fish that promises him to fulfil three wishes if he sets her free again. He does so and the fish fulfils two of his three wishes. However, she refuses to fulfil the third one, the last one in which the fisherman’s wife wants to be equal to God.
The first animated picture made by Jiří Trnka for adults. It is a comic story of a legendary chimney-cleaner who, with the help of a spring from an old lounge-chair, became the terror of the Prague-occupying SS troops in World War II.
Trnka reached new heights of modernist abstraction with this innovative, surrealist mini-masterwork, which critic Jean-Pierre Coursodon praised as the Citizen Kane of animation.
Folk art–like hand-drawn stills illustrate this sweetly simple pastoral fable, in which a peasant comes into possession of a small fortune—but realizes there are treasures greater than gold.
This melancholy piece about the metamorphoses of love and the eternal dissatisfaction of human beings with what they have was inspired by the lyrics of the French song "Plaisir d'amour."
The first Czech cartoon based on a fairy-tale about grandpa, grandma, their granddaughter, dog and cat who all wanted to pull a big beet out from the ground. The picture shows children that a big task can only be fulfilled by joint effort.