“We still remember our high wall. Even the day we first climbed it, filled with curiosity. The sadness of the discoveries of those years seemed devastating to us. Then we wondered how we could have forgotten it so suddenly.” Vysoká zeď [The High Wall] (Karel Kachyňa, 1964)
Jul
23
The young man (Vít Olmer) rests in the sun with Jitka (Radka Dulíková) observing him. DP: Josef Vaniš.
Someone is in an ambulance or hospital*
– prologue
It's summer in Prague. Jitka, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, follows a stray cat and finds a tall hospital wall. Behind it, a young man in a wheelchair rests. The girl and the man connect.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.
Prague
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Hroch [The Hippo] (Karel Steklý, 1973)
Feb
15
World Hippo Day
A poster for Hroch, showing a beautifully dressed woman in an animal enclosure feeding a hippopotamus what appears to be a consecrated wafer. A TV camera in the back records it all. DP: František Uldrich.
In this political satire criticising Czechoslovakia's “normalisation” period, a journalist learns about bank employee Bedrich Hroch, who – while attempting to determine how much #gold the local #zoo's hippopotamus' needs for a tooth replacement – is swallowed by the animal.
With the man happily residing inside the creature, his journalist friend hatches a plan to use the “talking hippo” for political means .