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These four animated fairy tales share not only the name of screenwriter, dramaturge and occasional director Edgar Dutka, but also an original sense of humour filled with parody, irony, new takes on fairy-tale stereotypes and innuendos obscure to children but humorous to grown-ups.

Maryshka and the Wolf’s Castle is a story about the courage, selflessness and loyalty of a poor girl named Maryshka who sets free an enchanted princess and her twelve maids from a mysterious castle. Even today this captivating puppet fairy tale has a very mysterious atmosphere. The Golden Mouse is an atypical fairy tale starring a king swordsman who hasn’t time for his own daughter Milča, due to all the swordplay. She has a sleepy piano teacher and always runs away to their neighbour, Vendelín. But during one of her escapes, a sorcerer turns her into a mouse. In Budulinek Mandelinka everything is a bit different from the classical version of this fairy tale. Budulinek, designed in the style of Josef Lada, lives with his grandparents. As he’s naughty and full of mischief, his grandfather comes up with the idea that he will only tell Budulinek opposites. Similarly cunning is Queen Koloběžka based on a fairy tale by Jan Werich (and narrated by him). A young king has to settle a petty dispute between a stupid miller and an equally stupid fisherman. But suddenly the fisherman’s smart daughter enters the scene.

Maryshka and the Wolf‘s Castle
Directors: Vlasta Pospíšilová, Edgar Dutka, Czechoslovakia, 1979, 15 min

The Golden Mouse
Director: Edgar Dutka, Czechoslovakia, 1990, 18 min

Budulinek Mandelinka
Director: Josef Kluge, Czechoslovakia, 1979, 14 min

Queen Koloběžka
Director: Dagmar Doubková, Czechoslovakia, 1981, 12 min

The second showcase we put together with Edgar Dutka from his work for children is dominated by animal heroes and literary adaptations. We will see his lesser known Bedtime Story about Bumblebees and stay in the world of insects in the humorous story of two clumsy spooks (Scaring Bumblebees). The book by František Nepil about a dog named Baryk has been adapted into an equally charming animated series – Adolf Born created its graphic design and the main hero was voiced by the author himself. Two short films were inspired by Hans Christian Andersen. The first is a modern adaptation of The FIint and the second is the slightly scary yet visually exquisite The Little Match Girl. We can’t forget the legendary Bit-of-All-Hair, a humorous, folksy tale based on the story by Josef Štefan Kubín and adapted for children by screenwriter Dutka and director Smetana. Narrated by the legendary František Filipovský, it’s full of innuendos which will definitely entertain grown-ups.

The Flint
Director: Dagmar Doubková, Czechoslovakia, 1985, 17 min

Bumblebees – The Master of the Contrabass
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1977, 8 min

The Little Match Girl
Director: Milada Kačenová, Czechoslovakia, 1984, 7 min

Bit-Of-All-Hair
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1978, 12 min

Scaring Bumblebees
Director: Zdeněk Smetana, Czechoslovakia, 1977, 7 min

I, Baryk – I, Baryk, and My Hedgehog
Director: Jiří Kubíček, Czech Republic, 1997, 7 min

Nostalgic, inventive and superbly animated – those are just some of the attributes that apply to Jiří Barta’s feature film titled In the Attic or Who Has a Birthday Today? Barta likes to animate forgotten and discarded objects and create their own specific world. In a similar style and also in collaboration with Edgar Dutka, he previously made a short film titled The Club of the Laid Off (1989).

Four friends set up a cosy home in a dusty old trunk in an attic: a pretty doll named Buttercup, a hedonistic and somewhat lazy teddy bear named Mucha, a marionette Prince Charming and a spry plasticine gnome named Schubert. They are cheerful and playful and every day at breakfast, they draw someone who has a birthday that day. The birthday boy/girl gets a song; the lovely Buttercup bakes a cake and then sends her friends off to ‘work’. Mucha is a train dispatcher at a nearby station, Schubert an engine driver and Prince Charming takes the train every day to the dragon’s den where he fights a fierce inflatable dragon. But their idyllic life of joyful games and playful rituals is destroyed by the Lord of the Land of Evil – a bronzed plaster ‘Head’. He orders his henchmen to kidnap Buttercup. On their quest to save Buttercup, her friends have to overcome dangerous obstacles and rely on help from other inhabitants of the attic, led by a clever mouse named Sklodowski. This successful film, which has won many awards and nominations at various festivals, was adapted into a theatrical play several years later.