Bye Bye Children's Home

Humans are the only living beings that consciously destroy the environment and landscape in which they live. Perhaps it is because we are incapable of nurturing our inner landscape, which we also often consciously destroy. The inner and outer landscapes are communicating vessels that reflect one another, and yoga can be one way of cultivating them.

The documentary series Czechs Save… with host Dan Bárta looks at endangered animals all over the world and the Czech naturalists who, often thousands of kilometers away from home, are working to save them. The first episode of the series focuses on the work of the young biologist Hana Svobodová, who is trying to protect sea turtles on several islands around Borneo. Although there exist other breeding stations, her extensive knowledge of the turtles lives allows her to help them more effectively.

Míla and Kamil could not have their own children so they decided to adopt. Eventually, they have adopted or fostered 8 children. Their daughter Petra who suffers from autism faces problems that are trying for the whole family. The 6-part documentary series chronicles six different pathways where parents meet with abandoned and wounded children who come from care centres and children’s homes to live with them temporarily.

What happens when an entire village is made part of an art project? The story of a seemingly ordinary village that, thanks to the ideas of artist Kateřina Šedá, is turned into a living work of art

The largest antelope in the world, the giant eland, lives in the Senegalese savannah and is on the verge of extinction. Its numbers hover somewhere around the last two hundred individuals. A team led by engineer Karolína Brandlová has managed something unprecedented: At the Bandia Reservation just a few kilometers from the country’s capital, they have succeeded – through careful breeding and with the help of Senegalese preservationists and the operators of a local safari – to turn a group of just six antelopes into a herd numbering several dozen animals. The second episode of a documentary series hosted by Dan Bárta about endangered animals throughout the world.

Lada, once the largest and best manufacturer of automobiles in the Soviet Union, is today a financial disaster. In comes a seasoned Swedish manager with the job of bringing back the company’s golden era. At a meeting in the town of Tolyatti, deep in the heart of Russia, everyone comes with their own vision of the future that they do not want to compromise. The Russian Job is the story of great plans and even greater absurdity.

In 1994, Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba miraculously escaped from Auschwitz, driven by the conviction that they must inform the world about the horrors being committed at the camp. However, they soon discovered that few people were interested in them, as if nobody wanted to know about the Jewish suffering in the factories of death!

Although it is still a legal grey area, an increasing number of children in the Czech Republic are born to surrogate mothers who act as something like an incubator for the genetic material of other couples. But can you give birth to a child, hand it to someone else, and then go on with your life as if nothing has happened? What if the child “doesn’t turn out right” or if the couple has second thoughts about parenthood?

Where do xenophobic attitudes in society come from, and why have they been on the rise in the Czech society? Documentary filmmaker Apolena Rychlíková tries to find an answer in Brno, where the country’s neo-Nazis have come together on 1 May 2015 for a Europe-wide neo-Nazi and fascist event they are calling “For a Pure Europe.”

Sticking to the asphalt. Zipping through space. Everything in motion. Skateboard! In the gray atmosphere of 1970s and ’80s communist Czechoslovakia, it was something completely new and different. Love at first sight. A never-ending party. Adrenaline. Cult figures of the era’s skateboard scene tell their stories of broken bones, unbroken friendships, and wild rides towards freedom amidst communism.

They all wish to lead an ordinary life. What happened after the wedding was beyond their imagination. This documentary tells a story of five women who were psychologically and physically abused by their partner/husband and found the strength to talk about their horrifying experience.

Why does Russia lay claim to part of Ukraine and why do Ukrainians feel themselves to be the heirs of medieval Russia? The film does not address the current political situation in Ukraine, but tries to explain subjects about which many Czechs know very little: the historical and religious roots of the current conflict. The film was inspired by the award-winning and widely discussed book by literary historian M. C. Putna Scenes from the Cultural History of Russian Religiosity.