FAMU Prague film academy of the 1960s

In programme

FAMU Prague film academy of the 1960s

Miloš Forman, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš, Věra Chytilová, Jiří Menzel, Evald Schorm – today these are icons of the “third generation” of FAMU – the most specific of the “Czechoslovak film miracle” of the 1960s.

The talent of the FAMU students those days first reached audiences at cinemas as short film stories. The triptych of war stories Hlídač dynamite (The Guard of Dynamite), based on the story Němé barikády (Silent Barricades) by Jan Drda, had luke-warm reception; however, Perličky na dně (Pearls of the Deep), made in 1965 was applauded as if by a generational manifesto. The young filmmakers exchanged the proclaimed truths for the poetics of the everyday and the anti-hero.

This year’s FAMU of the 60s retrospective is stylistically diverse: it includes an unforgettable series of war films, comedies, shorts by famous (Němec, Chytilová, Jireš) and less famous (Bočan, Schmidt, Sirový) filmmakers of the Czech New Wave.

There is also a rare look at work by filmmakers who ended up working in documentary or television (Jan David, Petr Ruttner and Dušan Klein), and those whose film careers were cut short for many years (Vlastimil Venclík, Zdeněk Zaoral).