Herbert and Wilfried, the stonemason, are sitting in an infinitely deep, claustrophobic shaft. Because Herbert is in an extremely good mood and constantly strums away on his piano, Wilfried feels very annoyed and cannot concentrate on his work. He repeatedly warns Herbert to stop playing, but to no avail.
As he gradually turns mad, the dancer Nijinsky evokes the important episodes of his life. In costumes and sets of lush beauty, the divine puppet performs in a final show where the secondary characters are named: Diaghilev, Isadora Duncan, Stravinsky, Auguste Rodin, Léon Bakst.
On a West German Autobahn, Robert plummets from a bridge and is hospitalized. As he recovers, he flashes back to a Bulgarian holiday where he met Jutta and her uncle Lothar, who’d ordered a West German passport to smuggle her out of the DDR.
Otto is turning 65 and a big celebration with relatives and friends is coming up. What does life bring? A comfortable retirement, looking after his beloved grandchildren, lamenting the aches and pains of old age.
A village has to be destroyed for coal mining. Henning, a 15 years old boy, who wants to visit his grandfather one more time, realizes that nothing will be the way it used to be.
Andreas, who is ten, has been brought up by his grandmother. When she dies, he removes a putto from the crucifix placed upon her, puts it in his mouth and does not speak again.
This half-hour BBC documentary offers a revealing look at Svankmajer at work on "Death of Stalinism in Bohemia," and uses excerpts from his earlier films to trace the development of his unique sensibility.