Pavel Vitoch

School supply teacher timid folk art Ales Brabec won first prize at a music festival and will therefore offer to work for the Prague little theater in the basement. Its director Soukup just needs a few songs for the upcoming musical, and so is willing to do everything to Alex to create the right atmosphere for composing.

A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into music instruments. Great mystery is immediately found by TV station. And soon the military base becomes a stage for huge TV show.

This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology.