ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two cohorts of films aimed at negating previous discursive practices in favor of residential care and instead presenting its dark side. The first cohort includes such films as Lilika (by Branko Pleša, 1970) and its adaptation by the students of FAMU, Prague, in 1986, Neúplné zatmení (Incomplete eclipse, by Jaromil Jireš, 1983) and Kukačka v temném lese (Cuckoo in the dark forest, by Antonín Moskalyk, 1986), which feature female protagonists, girls who experience residential care as a part of their personal emancipation from collective identities. These films directly attacked the traditional objectification of girls in films that extolled the virtues of residential care, deconstructing the progressive meaning of residential care through sharpening the conflict between the female protagonist and the male representative of institutional power and substitute father. The second cohort reconstructs the idea of family as a unit of the nation opposed to residential care, through telling the story of the rescue of young boys, for example, the Oscar-winning Kolja (Kolya, by Jan Svěrak, 1996). By presenting the arbitrariness of residential care as a part of the recent totalitarian past and imbuing families with magical powers, these films reinforced the traditional narrative practices of mass entertainment.
