Jan Němec
Overview of films
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Landscape of My Heart
A visit to Prague by the most powerful man in the world coincides with Jan Němec’s heart operation. He captures both events in a philoso
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Oratorio for Prague
Intended to capture the hopeful atmosphere of the Prague Spring, Němec instead filmed its transition into the bloody occupation of Czecho
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A Memory for the Present
Disturbing archival images of World War Two are juxtaposed with Němec’s observations of a post-war ‘liberated’ Czechoslovakia. A
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Die Verwandlung
In his typically personal approach, Němec adapts Kafka’s famous story by depicting Samsa’s world through a subjective camera, emph
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Martyrs of Love
A luscious non-political musical comedy, this three-part ballad uses music to stand in for dialogue. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy
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True Stories: Peace in Our Time?
In one of his most straightforward documentaries, Němec tackles his nation’s trauma: the signing of the Munich Treaty, which lead to the disa
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The Czech Connection
Jan Němec deconstructs his own identity, imagining and playing out different versions of his life and death. A truly experimental self-po
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Mutter und Sohn
Commissioned at the Amsterdam Film Festival, this absurdist parable about the doting mother of a brutal torturer was shot without permission of the
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A Loaf of Bread
Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation. Young prisoners exhausted by famine plan to steal some bread from a German train. Němec’s first fi
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Between Minute 4 and 5
Forbidden to work on fiction, Němec was assigned to direct a social documentary. Focusing on Prague’s emergency services, this was
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Heart Beat 3D
Enthusiastic about digital technologies, Němec took up a long-gestating script he wrote with Václav Havel in the 1960s and decided mid-produ
