Záviš a Kunhuta

In his delirium from his return from war, Francesco Bernardone goes back in his memories to the days when he lived for parties and carnal pleasures. He slowly recovers, but after the illness he is no longer the Francesco that everybody knew. Instead of spending hours in taverns, he meditates on the beauty of God's creatures, soon renouncing his riches and his family with plans to rebuild an abandoned church and his life.

When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their number, Vasili and Gavrilo, begin a contest of bravery to win the hand of a local maiden.

Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.

On his deathbed, the reigning king bestows power to an unexpected heir who must find strength within himself to unite his people against the violent crusades which threaten their freedom.

In the early 1200s, Dogen brought Chinese Zen philosophy to Japan, and established the Japanese Zen school of Buddhism. He taught that a person was capable of realizing Buddhahood within himself, by way of Zazen. Zazen is extended hours of sitting and meditating to achieve a state of “Mu” (nothingness, or empty existence).

Rajputana, India, 13th century. The tyrannical usurper Alauddin Khilji, sultan of Delhi, becomes obsessed with Queen Padmavati, wife of King Ratan Singh of Mewar, and goes to great lengths to satisfy his greed for her.

It is the world's most mysterious manuscript. A book, written by an unknown author, illustrated with pictures that are as bizarre as they are puzzling - and written in a language that even the best cryptographers have been unable to decode.

In the 1200s, a man arose whose ruthlessness was so feared, he emerged as the greatest empire builder ever known to mankind. Inspired by true historical events.

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father's properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.

In the year 1215, the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, a seminal document that upheld the rights of free men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel's momentous struggle for justice and freedom.

Assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to convert the court of Kublai Khan to Christianity, Marco Polo is abandoned in the mountains when the priests, doubting the very existence of China, turn back. Polo eventually pushes bravely forth alone toward the fabled country where he is accepted as an envoy into Khan's court. Marooned on the far side of the world, Polo, accompanied by his servant, Pedro, advances as a Mongol grandee for twenty extraordinary years. What he eventually brings back with him to the West is a chronicle that changed history forever.

During the 13th century, a small village fights for freedom in the frontier landscape of the Carpathian Mountains against Mongolian invaders.

13th century France. To live, to survive, requires weapons. Which do you choose? Weapons of war, which give the power to punish and kill? Or the sword of knowledge, which gives the power to read and heal? Two brothers, separated long ago, must do battle. Alongside, and coming between them, a woman... Thomas, the mercenary, his body marked by scars of varying degrees of valor, left the family farm many years ago. When he returns, his mother, the local healer, is dead. She passed on her skills to her younger son, Arnaud. But he has lost his memory after a beating from a gang of ruthless outlaws. And so, Arnaud's young and defiantly resourceful wife, Guillemette, must persuade Thomas to help her in the quest for lost knowledge.

Puglia, southern Italy, around 1400. A convent is invaded by the Tarantula cult, whose fanatical and crazed members desecrate the sacred place by committing obscene and bloody acts.

With only a handful of his friends, Veer Hamir sets to defend the Temple of Somnath in Veraval, Gujarat against the powerful army of Sultan Mohamad Begado. An unlikely endeavor. This historical film, based on the doctoral thesis of Dipak Vyas, beautifully captures 15th century Gujarat, India: their people, religious beliefs, and politics.

A dramatised documentary about the life of Rumi, a Persian mystical poet whose images of universal love and divine mystery continue to be celebrated more than 700 years after his death.

Ján Literát

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