Summary
A favourite Barrandov film studios practice – making motion pictures with multiple storylines that allowed three novice directors to debut at once – was behind the delivery of Jak rodí chlap (Man in Labour, 1980). For Zdeněk Troška and Jan Ekl it really was their first attempt at making a short film; Vladimír Drha had already directed a short as part of the multi-narrative film Návštěvy (The Visitors, 1970), which was not completed for ideological reasons. The three short stories, scripted by David Jan Novotný, have the common theme of first-time fathers. The hero of Troška’s story Poštovský panáček (Mail Coach Driver, 1979) is a postman working in the mountains, Ekl’s crime story Hádanka (The Riddle, 1979) is about a new father who becomes a suspect in a murder case, and Drha’s Věrné milování (Faithful Love, 1979) is a tale of punishment meted out to a barfly. While it was a promising start for both Troška and Drha, Ekl later gave up directing films.
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