Jiří Menzel

One of the best-known and most successful Czech directors, Jiří Menzel fell in love with the films of Chaplin, Clair, Renoir and others while still in primary school. Yet it was theatre he first chose to study, and it was only after he failed to get into drama school that he was awarded a place at FAMU (Prague Film Academy) where he was a student from 1958 to 1962. It was a particularly good year (it included among others Vera Chytilová and Evald Schorm), and is widely regarded as the driving force behind the Czech New Wave. In 1965, together with Jan Němec, Věra Chytilová, Evald Schorm and Jaromil Jireš, he directed “Pearls on the Bottom”, a feature made up of several different stories (FIPRESCI award, Locarno Film Festival). His first solo full-length feature, “Closely Watched Trains” (1966), based on a story by Bohumil Hrabal, won him a number of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces in 1968 and the period of so-called ‘normaLízation’ that followed, he was one of the first directors to be barred from filmmaking. The communists were particularly outraged by his next Hrabal adaptation “Larks on a String” (1969) – an exposé of the true nature of ‘people’s democracy’ in fifties’ Czechoslovakia. (The film was not shown until 1990 when, among other awards, it won the Golden Bear at Berlin). In the midseventies he returned to directing with “Who Seeks a Handful of Gold” (1974), a depiction of working-class life. But it was the chance to adapt two other Hrabal works for the screen – “Cutting it Short” (1980, special prize at the Venice Film Festival) and “Snowdrop Festival” (1983) that finally brought him real creative freedom.

In 1986 he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for “My Sweet Little Village” (1985). Menzel’s last film to date, is an adaptation of Vladimir Voynovitch’s bestselling novel “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” (1993). Since then he has worked exclusively in the theatre, in Prague’s Cinoherní klub (Drama Club), Divadlo na zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade), Divadlo na Vinohradech (Vineyards Theatre), and as guest director on several leading European stages, among them the Comédie-Francaise in Paris. Other full length features directed by Menzel include “Capricious Summer” (1967, Grand Prix, Karlovy Vary), “Seclusion Near the Forest” (1976, Silver Hugo, Chicago; FIPRESCI special prize, Mannheim; CIC prize, San Sebastian), “The End of the Old Times” (1989, Best Director and Best Film awards, Los Angeles; Best Director, Montreal, Las Vegas and Melbourne) and “The Beggar’s Opera” (1991, Special Prize, Chicago).

Among Menzel’s notable appearances as an actor are his roles in “The Accused” (1964) which won its joint directors Ján Kadár and Elmar Kloss an Academy Award, “The Body-Burner” (1968, dir. Juraj Herz), “30 Virgins and Pythagoras” (1973, dir. Pavel Hobl), “The Apple Game” (1976, dir. Vera Chytilová), “Greetings from Planet Earth” (1982, dir. Oldrich Lipsky), “The Vampire of Ferato” (1982, dir. Juraj Herz), “The Gentle Barbarian” (1989, dir. Petr Koliha), “Martha and I” (1990, dir. Jiří Weiss), “La Petite Apocalypse” (1992, dir. Costa-Gavras) and “Escape to Budin” (2002, dir. Miloslav Luther). Jirí Menzel is a member of The Czech Film and Television Academy, The European Film Academy and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has received many prestigious awards, among them the French order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Akira Kurosawa Prize for Lifetime’s Achievement at the San Francisco Film Festival.

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