Olinka Berova Movies

Curiously, communist authorities in Eastern Bloc countries frequently allowed "subversive" films to be made, but then withheld them from circulation. Only rarely was production of one of these halted in mid-stream. This is one of those rare films that were begun and then stopped. The director completed it twenty years later, and showed it at the Venice Film Festival in 1990. However, the aging process has also dimmed the memories of the insults to dignity which the film skewers, so that the full meaning of the film is likely only to be accessible to Slovaks who lived through the late '60s and the '70s in that country. The original story, an edenic ménage à trois is broken up by the appearance of people from outside its happy confines. This romance is framed by a story (the '80s footage) in which one of the members of that original trio has been ejected from his antique car during an accident, and is lying in the snow recalling the better days of his youth. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Killikrates (John Richardson) is the ruler of the city of Kuma, an idyllic civilization seemingly frozen in another time. In a religious ceremony, he waits for his Queen Ayesha (Olinka Berova) to return and be immortalized by a fiery ritual. The High Priest has other ideas and plants a look-alike from provincial France to take her place. The new girl has a boyfriend, a dedicated physician who must rescue his damsel in distress. The doctor battles against the evil machinations of the High Priest to save his true love and help the benevolent ruler keep his crown. Things get out of hand when the fire spreads out of control and Kuma is in danger of being completely engulfed in flames. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this zany Czechoslovakian comedy, a scientist invents a machine that projects a sleeping person's dream on a screen. The trouble begins when she tries the contraption out on her husband and discovers his dreams are filled with cartoon-like characters doing outrageous things. Naturally, the scientist is quite shocked. Believing that such frivolous fantasies just won't do, she tries to manipulate his dreams. Disaster soon follows when the machine malfunctions and the dream characters become very real. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi