The film director was one of the best known figures of the Czech New Wave.

Czech film director Jiří Menzel died at the age of eighty-three. One of the most famous creators of the Czech New Wave also worked as a screenwriter, actor and theater director. In 1967, he received an Oscar for his film Strictly Controlled Trains, based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal.

Menzel’s death was posted on his Facebook post by his wife, Olga Menzelova, to which he also added a video showing Menzel and his family until the last phase of his illness.

Menzel graduated in film directing from the Faculty of Arts in Prague (FAMI) in 1962. In 1956-57 he was an assistant at Prague Television. Until 1963, as an employee of the Czechoslovak News, he was an assistant to Véra Chytilová, and from 1963 to 1965 he was the director of a film studio. From 1965 he worked as a director at the Barrandov Studio film studio. He made his first short films in 1965. He was a guest director in Sweden in 1971, in the FRG in 1977-78 and in Switzerland.

According to the IMDb database, he directed 29 short films or feature films, making a scene for the first time in a feature film in the 1965 film Beads in the Deep. His most famous film, A Strictly Controlled Trains, was made a year later. This was followed, for example, by the capricious summer, the sparrows on a string or the Capriccio brewery; the latter were also based on Hrabal’s novels, as was I on Her Majesty’s Majesty in 2007. His latest film, Don Juan, was released in 2013.

His friendship with many Hungarian artists is well known. She has starred in several Hungarian films (eg Szívzűr – Géza Böszörményi, Felhrthurjáték – Gyula Maár, Sundays of Franciska – Sándor Simó, The Door – István Szabó); she also directed a play in Hungary. At the Katona József Theater he performed the play by Carlo Gozzi Deer King. In 2004, the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary received the star.

In addition to the Oscar, Menzel was nominated for the Golden Bear three times at the Berlin Film Festival, the Sparrows Thread. She won by sharing her 1969 film in 1990. Her other two nominations were I was Her Majesty’s Waiter (2006), for which she won the FIPRESCI award and The Who Earns Gold. filmje (1957). Karlovy Vary won the Crystal Globe once, with the Whimsical Summer in 1968, and was nominated twice for the Golden Lion in Venice, the Brewery Capriction in 1981, and the Life and Special Adventures of Private Private Ivan Chonkin in 1994. his movie. She brought a small prize to the festival with her two films.

The artist gave an interview to hvg.hu in 2013, in which he spoke, among other things, about his favorite film, and what could be the coronation of his work in addition to his funeral. Then put it this way:

I treat all my films in the same way, that is, not at all. I treat them primarily as a neutral factor, although I would certainly be saddened if they didn’t exist.

Jiří Menzel: My funeral will crown my films

Menzel’s films are exactly like the man behind them: they are infinitely honest and don’t want to see each other more than they are. What is the world like for a 75-year-old Oscar-winning Czech director? And what do you think of Facebook? And why didn’t he shake his hand with his fan? At the Titanic Film Festival, we spoke to the director of Strictly Controlled Trains and His Majesty’s Waiter.



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