Season 1

2009 · 26 episodes

Episodes

1Miloš FormanIf he were to choose today between creating under ideological demands or commercial demands, he would again choose the latter possibility. The famous American film director made, despite that, in the communist Czechoslovakia of the sixties the following films, which belong to the best of our cinematography: Audition (Konkurs, 1963), Black Peter (Černý Petr, 1963), Loves of a Blond (Lásky jedné plavovlásky, 1965), The Firemen’s Ball (Hoří, má panenko, 1967). His fate as a war orphan had thought him to fight the circumstances in a similar way in which the heroes of his multi-Oscar films One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984). And also, to believe the ordinary truth and the ordinary people, his intuition and his coworkers and lifelong friends Ivan Passer, Jaroslav Papoušek and Miroslav Ondříček.
2Otakar VávraIn 2008, he ended his fifty-year lasting teaching career, even then he didn’t resign from the idea of another film. First film, The Light Penetrates the Darkness (Světlo proniká tmou), he made as a twenty-year young man in 1931 and since then there have been countless films made by him, feature films and documentaries. He worked in his adult life in all regimes, often as the first and always perfectly prepared director and as a screenwriter. There is no more controversial figure among Czech directors – the creator rising so many exciting emotions, who in the same time made so many key shots in the Czech cinematography. And who as a demanding teacher brought up so many students, his future competitors. He himself in contact with them also recovered, as evidenced by his movies Golden Queen (Zlatá reneta, 1965), Romance for Bugle (Romance pro křídlovku, 1966), The Thirteenth Chamber (Třináctá komnata, 1968) and Witches’ Hammer (Kladivo na čarodějnice, 1969).
3Juraj HerzThis 2009 documentary on Juraj Herz features in-depth interviews and copious clips from the director's work. Interview subjects include film-world luminaries Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Miroslav Ondříček, Otakar Vávra, and more.
4Miroslav OndříčekHe has twice been nominated for an Oscar for the camera in movies Ragtime (1981) and Amadeus (1984), in both cases it was a near thing. Yet no one doubts that he is one of the world’s prominent directors of photography. Since the mid- sixties, however, he stood behind the camera not only in famous films of Miloš Forman, but also of Ivan Passer, Jan Němec, Lindsay Anderson and George Roy Hill. He still believes in the power of cinematic storytelling with light and shadow, and he is attempting to inspire with his beliefs his students at the Film Academy named after Miroslav Ondříček in Písek.
5Věra ChytilováOriginally a student of architecture, then a draft person, laboratory technician, model, a film extra, script assistant, assistant director, student of FAMU with Otakar Vávra, and, finally a film director with more than half a century of active career as a filmmaker, agile and almost unbearably provocative, she has always gone to the Ceiling (Strop, 1961) of human possibilities and has almost always made Something Different (O něčem jiném, 1963) than her colleagues. With her uncompromising ways as to the artistic and civilian requirements as well as her in advocating the right to one’s own opinion she was provocative during the past regime (The Daisies /Sedmikrásky/ 1966; The Apple Game /Hra o jablko/, 1976) and cause public displeasure even today (The Traps /Pasti, pasti, pastičky/, 1998; Pleasant Moments /Hezké chvilky bez záruky/, 2006). She is also a mother of two children, a grandmother, and a recipient of lifelong attention.
6Albert MarenčinOne of those whose creativity was for long sacrificed for the work of others. After studying in Paris he began operating in Czechoslovak national film in Bratislava already in 1948. Since the early sixties, he has won recognition as a stage director of Na Kolibě do života, in films made by Štefan Uher, Stanislav Barabáš, Martin Hollý, Peter Solan and Eduard Grečner, and later in films by Juraj Jakubisko, Dušan Hanák, Elo Havetta, Leopold Lahola and Alain Robbe-Grillet. This way he helped creating the modern Slovak cinema – which earned him “a throw away” from the film industry in 1972. Later, anchored in the Slovak National Gallery, he has published on his own, also abroad. After November 1989 he utilizes his experience in a number of commemorative and reflexive texts and publications.
7Hynek BočanHe had encountered film as a fifteen year old boy in Jiří Sequens’ Lead Bread (1953) in which he had a bigger part than the later star actress Jana Brejchová. Today a prominent creator of classic television series begun with bitter probes into the Czech soul (for example Honor and Glory, 1968), which earned him several years of work restriction. He could not resume work until 1974 and gradually he made a series of comedies and dramas for movie theatres and television. After November 1989 he returned to the topics of the writer and screen writer Jiří Stránský, which they had been working on together already in the sixties: the most effectively in the story from the Stalinist camp, The Boomerang (1996), the most extensively in the multivolume series Wild Country (from 1997).
8Ladislav HelgeSocial issues presented to him, as a film director, always more than an artistic concept, politics meant more to him than poetics. Right after his feature debut School of Fathers (Škola otců, 1957) he established himself at the forefront of the reform efforts of cinematography after the “thaw” of 1956, soon, however, he was hit by the payoff of the regime in the form of censorship restrictions Great Solitude (Velká samota, 1959). He fell into a creative uncertainty and found his filmmaker’s image again only 10 years later, in a merciless analysis of a mentality of functionaries Shame (Stud, 1967). His active civilian participation in the renewal rejuvenation process in 1968 definitely took him out of cinematography. After the Soviet occupation he was fired from Barrandov, making his living as an office clerk and returned to his profession only within the framework of the programs of Laterna Magika theatre in the eighties.
9Jiří MenzelButch among students of Otakar Vávra, who finally, despite his initial shyness, proved to be much better than others. Before acquiring the post of film director, he played in movies made by his colleagues, getting on a peculiar actor type. Already for his first feature film Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966) he won the American Film Academy Award, later nominated was also his comedy My Sweet Little Village (Vesničko má středisková, 1985). Gradually he became a specialist for adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal’s prose, and it happened that just one of them, Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 1969), earned him work prohibition during the period of normalization. In his view of the world he is critical, but he harmonises indulgently, and perhaps that is why he is such a favorite with the audience. Until today abundant is his work in the theater, as a film director and actor.
10Stanislav MilotaŽižkovský flashy and self-taught, who was brought in the cameraman limelight by his immeasurable, exceptional imagination and technical ingenuity. And also courage: in time of Soviet invasion in August 1968 he shot hundreds of feet of documentary material from Prague streets, the same in January 1969 at the funeral of Jan Palach. Meanwhile, he helped with his obsessive visual concept the legendary Czech horror Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1968). Revenge for all this in the form of his removal from the film studio Barrandov and subsequent health problems mercilessly ended his career. After signing Charter 77, his farewell was house performance of his wife, actress Vlasta Chramostová Report on Burials in the Czech Republic (Zpráva o pohřbívání v Čechách, 1979).
11Jan KačerFrom the role of partisan Pavel in the Kadár-Klos film Because We Don’t Forget (Smrt si říká Engelchen, 1963), the icon actor of the sixties. Between the years of 1965-1975 a member of the Drama club, a theatre closely connected to the poetics of the new wave in film. A presenter of figures that were often quite anti-polar as to their character qualities in the films of Evald Schorm, Hynek Bočan, Antonín Máša, František Vláčil, Václav Vorlíček and Vaclav Gajer. During normalization he was expelled from Prague as politically maladjusted, and did not get the chance of larger film roles until the end of the eighties. Currently he works in theatre and television and is involved in charitable events, and summarizes the experiences of his life’s journey in compelling commemorative essays.
12Jan ŠvankmajerIronic cinematic magician and analyst of our conscious and unconscious lapses and passion. The original puppeteer training Semafor started in their own theater masks and direction participated in the Laterna Magica. Since the midsixties failed film as a medium in his best free play of imagination opened. His animated and combined film crosses species boundaries and genres and fascinate audiences around the world, penetrating trauma antiobsessional and modern humanity. Position as an independent artist the filmmakers have been drawn up under the totalitarian regime and continued by even now, when from Lesson Faust (Lekce Faust, 1994) focuses exclusively for feature films, every time a surprising nonconformance intellectual ingenuity and craftsmanship.
13Meir Lubor DohnalTogether with Ivan Jandl, the first holder of an Oscar and his classmate, they were interested in film already at the High School. He was growing up in the effervescent literary and theatrical milieu of the Prague bohemian circles of the sixties, at the film school FAMU, where he had studied dramaturgy, and was closest to the future film director Elo Havetta. To him, as well as to Juraj Jakubisko, Ivan Balaďa and Juraj Herz, he dedicated his imaginatively flared talent as a screen writer. He held a position of a head writer at the Koliba in Bratislava at the onset of the seventies before leaving for Barrandov. He was expelled from the Czechoslovak film after his signing of the Charter 77 and left for West Germany. At the present time he is a professor at the FAMU department of screenwriting and devotes himself to directing authorial documentaries.
14Drahomíra VihanováShe had always been interested in those who behave differently than others. And she was no different. She studied musicology and aesthetics, and in parallel piano at the conservatory, she wanted to become a pianist, reason, however, led her to FAMU. She graduated in contemporary directing and filmed custom documents. In feature film she debuted with an existential vision of the individual bankruptcy Squandered Sunday (Zabitá neděle, 1969). This movie went immediately into the safe and she was blacklisted for years as a filmmaker, under the given circumstances she proved herself an excellent documentary maker. In a feature film, she continued with her probes into human diversity in The Fortress (Pevností, 1994) and The Pilgrimage of Students Peter and Jacob (Zpráva o putování studentů Petra a Jakuba, 2000). She dedicated everything, even her privacy, to film. She was rather misunderstood, but remained herself, most challenging for herself.
15Jan SchmidtHe got to FAMU detour through medical studies and he was one from the famous generation of Otakar Vávra. Already at school and then even after finishing school he formed a tandem with screenwriter Pavel Juráček, they shot together, also valued abroad Kafka esque parable about Stalinist era Joseph Kilian (Postava k podpírání, 1963). In addition, he also directed unconventional sports documentaries. In August 1968 he found himself on the crew during filming in the Soviet Georgia, a romantic drama The Lanfier Colony (Kolonie Lanfieri 1969) could only be completed a year later. Normalization shifted his work to literary adaptations, but he still retained a sense of the action genre and boyish adventurism – for example in an impressive evocation of a private and social atmosphere of the fifties in The Return (Vracenky, 1990).
16Zdeněk MahlerHis name evokes music and he is most known as a moderator of television programs about music personages and other celebrities. An author of the literature of the fact, essayist and dramatic, he also dedicates himself from the sixties on to screen writing. He authored comedies and social dramas , an apocalyptic picture by Evald Schorm as an adaptation of his The Seventh Day The Eighth Night (Den sedmý – osmá noc, 1969) was labeled by the normalizators as the “apex of the socialistic pomography“, locked it away and expelled the authors from cinematography. Despite this he had returned to film again, collaborating for example on Forman’s Amadeus (1984) a developed his cultural and historical publicity on a broad scale, not only in publishing but and radio but mainly in television. The latest adaptation of his material gave birth to the film Lidice (2011).
17Jan NěmecEnfant terrible of the Czechoslovak New Wave. With his material he had problems already at FAMU, however, just with the first feature film, existentially tormenting Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci, 1964), he won respect at home and abroad. The allegory The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech, 1966), conversely attracted stiff opposition of the communist regime, which amplified after the Soviet occupation in August 1968. After fifteen years spent in exile, even there he had not stop as a filmmaker, a new artistic era began after his return home In the Light of the King's Love (V žáru královské lásky, 1990). Using new technologies, he also used as a source his own bohemian life (Late Night Talks with Mother /Noční hovory s matkou/, 2001–2002; The Ferrari Dino Girl /Holka Ferrari Dino/, 2009). With his formed subjectivity, production and distribution ingenuity, he is even now well beyond his generation.
18Eduard GrečnerHe belongs to the first Slovak student at the Prague FAMU. He begun with film directing and his long-term illness redirected him towards screen writing. After return to Slovakia he was a dramatist and assistant film director to Štefan Uher, among others to his Sun in a Net (Slunko v sieti, 1962), which de facto opened the way to the Czechoslovak new wave. As man of letters and a critic, he had maintained a sharply defined concept of an intellectual film, and achieved a real directorial success with his third film, an adaptation of a classic novel by Dobroslav Chrobák The Return of Dragon (Drak se vracia, 1967). During normalization he was relegated to dubbing, to feature film he returned twice in the nineties, again with his own adaptations modeled after D.H. Lawrence and Dobroslav Chrobák.
19Ivan BalaďaAlready in 1960 he made his first, TV treatment of Mňačko’s novel Because We Don’t Forget. He spent the next years with the Czechoslovakian Army Film, where he directed unconventional documentaries (for example, the parable on totality Metrum, 1967). At the same time he was making films for the Bratislava TV (The Lady, 1967), in feature films for the movie theaters his dynamic visual style did not get the opportunity until the Barrandov apocalyptic vision The Ark of Fools. This work was blacklisted in 1970 and presented again twenty years later. In a compulsory selfincrimination, its creator turned to the theatre, and he was allowed to make his second, and for the present, last film, Water of life, as late as in 1987. His lifelong existence on the sideline confirmed even his still underappreciated series The Grandest of Pierots (1990).
20Karel VachekAlready as a student at FAMU, he was sent for »re-education« to a factory. This, however, did not change his demasking and for many irritating attitude to reality. Evidence of this is found in more than one sarcastic view on cheesy and hollow abuse of folklore in The Moravian Hellas (Moravské Hellas, 1963), and in particularly irreverent portrait of protagonists of the Prague Spring in the feature document Elective Affinities (Spřízněni volbou, 1968). In the period of normalization he left short film, he lived from manual work, from 1979 to 1984 he lived in exile in France and the USA. Again he began to film frantically in the nineties, and he incarnated his testimony about the absurdities of restored democracy in the vast tetralogy Little Capitalist (Malý kapitalista, 1992–2002). He leads documentary filmmaking at FAMU, where he has brought up the entire school of his followers.
21Igor LutherFrom the time of leaving film school FAMU he collaborated mostly with his Slovak compatriots, film directs Elo Havetta (Forecast: Zero /Předpověď: nula/, 1966), Juraj Jakubisko (Crucial Years /Kristove roky/,1967) and Ivan Balaďa (The Lady /Dáma/, 1967). A dynamic hand-held camera and the use of realistic lighting became a part of his intuitive creative style, on account of which he would be soon sought after even in emigration after August 1968. He has made almost a hundred films for movie theatres and television, amongst others, with artists such as Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum,1979) or Andrzej Wajda (Danton, 1982).
22Juraj JakubiskoHis untamable talent brought him from the East-Slovakian Kojšov to the sunlight of European cinematography. A fierce experimenter with the magic of optics, a cruel and loving illusionist, through his films he got a nickname of the “Slovak Fellini.” Together with Dušan Hanák and Elo Havetta he has literally created the Slovak modern cinematography. But the revenge of the normalizers did not miss him, either. In the seventies he was displaced from creating documentaries and only later in 1983 was he back in the game of poetics with his A Thousand Year Old Bee (Tisícoročná včela, 1983). In the nineties he relocated with his wife Deana Horváth-Jakubisko to Prague and together they founded the present company Jakubisko Film. Its last production is a whirlwind historic fresco Bathory (2008).
23Vojtěch JasnýA filmmaker tied to his homeland in way very few people are, and yet forced by circumstance to become, against his will, a runner through foreign lands. His beginning was in tandem with Karel Kachyňa, and he had liberated himself from the diligent service to the communist regime by the socio critical trilogy Desire (Touha, 1958), The Cassandra Cat (Až přijde kocour, 1963), All Good Citizens (Všichni dobří rodáci, 1968). However he paid for it by the loss of his prominent position and an enforced emigration in 1970. In his motherland he got an opportunity to make a feature Return to Paradise Lost (Návrat ztraceného ráje, 1999) and thereafter continued with documentaries and with his long-life passion - photography.
24Dušan HanákAlready during his studies at Prague’s FAMU he had captivated by his short films. The befitting title of his first film, Melancholy (Zádumčivost, 1963) captures their tone. A sensitive and individualistic approach to reality led him to its critical depiction, and hence to conflicts with political power. His played debut 322 (1969) was struck with a ban, his full feature documentary essay Picture of the Old World (Obrazy starého světa, 1972) was laid by the normalizators into a safe deposit, eight years after an accusation of existentionalism and the screenings of his I Love, You Love (Já milujem, ty miluješ, 1980) were not allowed. Nevertheless, as one of only a few Czechoslovak filmmakers he had managed to defend his freedom of expression and underscored its meaning in the documentary epic about the totalitarian regime in The Paper Heads (Papierové hlavy, 1995). Photography then became a new area of creative expression.
25Vít OlmerHe began his career as a successful and sought-after stage and film actor, he advanced even to the boards of the National Theatre. After acting at DAMU he have graduated from film directing at FAMU and gained fame with unconventional short films, such as about life of nobility under socialism Citizens with a Coat of Arms (Občané s erbem[/i], 1966). He even succeeded to debute with feature film So Bye- Bye (Takže ahoj, 1970), but was then relegated to the dubbing and was allowed to return to production only ten years later. Films from the eighties captured marasmus of the regime in decline The Big Money (Bony a klid, 1987), after the political change he harvested a theatre success of the decade with Tank Battalion (Tankový prapor, 1991), the first film in a private production. In his desire to repeat, however, could not resist decline of values, he had more fortune in fiction and documentary television production.
26Ivan PasserNomad in his directorial and human destiny. His father, farmer, was expropriated by the communist regime, he himself was repeatedly thrown from studies, finally, after years of studies also thrown from FAMU. He walked along the path of learning from practical experiences of other producers, he participated in all Czech films of Miloš Forman. Home alone he produced only one full-length film, but it was a cinematographic gem: nostalgic episode of lost illusions Intimate Lighting (Intimní osvětlení, 1965). Since leaving into exile in 1969 he made the next fifteen films in the U.S. for cinema and television. And as the creator in the commercial film production he continued to base his work on his human and artistic principles. He transferred to film-screen stories of social outsiders, outstanding personalities and criminals (Stalin, 1992) always in the background watching the problem of human freedom.