This movie essay is a collage drawn from the diaries of Czech screenwriter and director Pavel Juráček. It attempts to portray Juráček’s personality in all its complexity. It investigates not only his social activities and his work, but also seeks to elucidate the director’s troubled private life. The Key for Determining Dwarfs is a pseudo-documentary combining dramatic sequences with archive footage and period stills. The film is interesting for its bold attempt to reconstruct the context and social background of the entire Czechoslovak new wave generation, a miraculous period for this small nation’s film industry.

Cast / Marek Juráček , Edita Levá , Julie Ritzingerová , Šárka Dvořáková , Eliška Doušová    Writer / Martin Šulík , Jan Lukeš    DoP / Martin Štrba    Editor / Jiří Brožek    Sound / Daniel Němec    Music / Jaroslav Šťastný-Pokorný    Costumes / Marta Ostenová    Set Designer / Petr Fořt

Release date / 29 July 2002