Milan Kazda & plzeňská ŽEFA — utváření malého Barrandova

Milan Kazda & plzeňská ŽEFA — utváření malého Barrandova

Milan Kazda (6/7/1931–1/10/2015) in cooperation with director of photography Miloš Havránek and the ŽEFA group (Railway Film Amateurs) belonged to those who in the 1960s helped create the sense of respectable level and possibilities of Czech amateur film.

Milan Kazda moved from photography to the making of his first film Student’s Dream in 1953. Soon after this, in January 1956, he co-founded a studio for Railway Film Amateurs in Pilsen, where he lived to see its abolishment in 1969. In 1964 he participated in the forming of Škodafilm and Studio PKO Film in Pilsen, which function under the Pilsen Park of Culture and Leisure. ŽEFA was one of several ambitious groups of so-called “amateur professionals”, or in short “halfprofessionals”, which never suffered from a lack of funds from the factory, and so they could to some extent compete in the area of industry film with small studios of Czechoslovak National Film.

Milan Kazda worked in ŽEFA as a director and manager. His workload ranged from purposebuilt documents to socially-critical surveys, from lobbying to satire he was heading for critique-sharpened allegories. Although in 1971 he was allowed to finish his distance studies at the Department of Documentary at FAMU, he was not allowed to continue working for his opinionated films from the era of Prague Spring. He only actively returned to film in 1990 when he founded a private studio, Video Studio K.

Programme prepared by: Miloš Henkrich

Student’s Dream Czechoslovakia — Czechoslovakia, 1953, 12'
Why You Have to Die — ČSR, 1959, 12'
By Any Means — ČSR, 1959, 6'
Saviour — ČSR, 1962, 16'
The Hole — ČSR, 1963, 10'
Cupid’s Tragedy — ČSR, 1964, 10'
Shaping Head — ČSR, 1965, 10'
Stories — ČSR, 1965, 8'
Normalization — Czechoslovakia, 1968, 2'
Tiny Tot’s Ballad — Czechoslovakia, 1968, 14'