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Budapest Classic Film Marathon: The Stolen Airship

Ukradená vzducholod
Italian-Czechoslovak adventure, bw/colour, 90 min, 1967
in Czech with Hungarian and English subtitles

Show times:

Director: Karel Zeman

Written by Jules Verne
Screenplay by Karel Zeman
Director of photography: Josef Novotný, Bohuslav Pikhart
Music by Jan Novák
CastHanus Bor, Jan Cizek, Jan Malát

Open Archives / The fantastical world of Karel Zeman 

Introduction: Ondrej Beranek, Producer, Founder of the Karel Zeman Museum

Karel Zeman’s live-action animation film begins with a cultural history of naughtiness. The initial sequences evoke Marcell Jankovics’s movie The Tragedy of Man: ages and styles follow one another in quick succession until, as though by the wave of a magic wand, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a busy fair where anything can happen, even bad children breaking a chair over a policeman’s head. Then all is revealed: a cigar-smoking old man, his armchair tied to a balloon, falls back to earth with the aid of an umbrella. It is as if a childhood dream could become reality, as if drawing could bring imagination to life, like in the cartoon The Enchanted Pencil. It is like witnessing the birth of cyber punk: then these urchins and scamps fly off over Europe and the ocean in an airship, and we find ourselves knee-deep in a genuine Czech comedy, then in a Verne story that mainly resembles The Mysterious Island. But everything else, too. Everything that might come into the mind of a great artist with an imagination akin to an untethered balloon.


Opening hours: Summer opening hours from June 26 to August 28, 2025! During this period, the box office opens on weekdays at 4:30 PM, on weekends at 10:30 AM.
Box office closes 15 minutes after the start of the last screening.
The Uránia Café is open during the opening hours of the cinema.
© Uránia Nemzeti Filmszínház

1088 Budapest, Rákóczi út 21.

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