If you are here reading this, it's likely because you are a fan of documentaries or interested in 20th Century Czechoslovakian history. The fact is, I'm an American who lived in Prague from 1996 to 1999 and wrote for the Prague Post, and also did some editing at Radio Free Europe.

I am also a fan of documentaries, so I had both reasons for watching it.

But I am here to tell you anyone would find Private Century engrossing. In a nutshell, Private Century is an eight-episode (each one 52 minutes long) documentary made for Czech television done entirely in home movies. Each episode follows one family down the years. Sometimes historical events like the Nazi occupation or the onset of communism are in the foreground and sometimes in the background. As we watch, a narrator, speaking for a member of the family, describes the what, who and when of what we see.

When I say home movies, I do not mean birthday parties and Christmas mornings. There are smiling people at picnics, true, but there are also major outdoor events like parades, peasants working in the fields and even, in one instance, a wife cavorting in the nude while hubby rolls the film.

The narration and editing are what makes this work. The calm narration will tell us that the grinning characters we are watching are alcoholics, adulterers, narcissists, wife beaters, Nazi sympathizers, communist stooges, etc. The editing weaves a tapestry of images that themselves comment on the passing of events. It is just brilliant. Working together, the narration and editing often create a profound irony and bitter commentary on the nature of the human condition. Any sense of nostalgia for these folks, seen here in their vital youth but mostly all dead now, is pretty much destroyed. These old timers were as messed up and foolish as we are today.

Among the major characters we watch through the decades are a wealthy farmer, a sculptor and other occupations. But the last episode, the most powerful of all, depicts a MiG pilot in the Czech air force during the communist era. This guy is at the pinnacle. He's handsome, virile and highly respected. His wife, who narrates, is beautiful and they have a charming child. Then, the Soviets take notice of him and he's brought to Moscow for special training at an institute. This institute, as his wife dryly informs us, turns out to be a sinkhole of drugs, alcohol, whores and other depravity. At one point, we're told, the wife finds herself in a conversation with a prostitute who wants to make a bet with her that she can seduce her husband.

Private Century, which comes on two DVDs, is a documentary unlike any made before and, perhaps, never to be matched again. It's an extraordinary achievement.