The White Disease / Krakatit Blu-ray

The White Disease

direction and scenario: Hugo Haas
Czechoslovakia 1937
length: 106 mins
cast:  Hugo Haas, Zdeněk Štěpánek, Karla Oličová, Bedřich Karen, Václav Vydra st., Ladislav Boháč, Jaroslav Průcha a další.

Set in a country where a dictator has been successfully persuading the nation with his fiery speeches about their superiority and the justifications for military expansion, the bacteria of a very destructive form of leprosy has been spreading. It is called the Morbus Tshengi, more commonly referred to as the „white disease“. The only person who has developed an effective drug against it is a poor doctor named Galen. However, he refuses to reveal the secret of his cure until the powerful stop destroying people’s lives through war.

Bonus materials:

The White Disease (Jan Bušta, 2016), The Digital Restoration of the Most Common Types of Damage to Film Material (2016), The Illusion Factory (Jiří Weiss, 1938), Hugo Haas 1964, (Rudolf Adler, 1965) The Raven and the Turtle (Jan Fuksa, 1948), Iron Hat (Josef Kábrt, 1961)

Krakatit

direction: Otakar Vávra
Czechoslovakia 1948
length: 97 mins
cast: Karel Höger, Florence Marly, František Smolík, Nataša Tánská, Miroslav Homola, Jaroslav Průcha a další.

Krakatit is the name for an explosive that comes with unimaginably devastating consequences. It even scares its own inventor, an engineer named Prokop, however, many others see it as a long sought after instrument for absolute power. In the eponymous novel by Karel Čapek, which was published in 1924, Prokop’s experiments and their consequences were purely the visions of its creator. In comparison, the film adaptation, which was created shortly after the Second World War and the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was partially intended to clearly reflect actual events. In addition to the urgent moral appeal, the film still blows audiences away with its delirious atmosphere and the visual inventiveness of the realistic shots filmed on location and its fantastic scenes.

Bonus materials:
Trailer (2016), Light Penetrates the Darkness (Otakar Vávra, 1931), The Hall of Lost Steps (Jaromil Jireš, 1960), The Last Years (Zdeněk Kopáč, 1963), Atom at a Crossroads (Čeněk Duba, 1947).