Věra Chytilová

Věra Chytilová (; 2 February 1929 – 12 March 2014) was a Czech avant-garde filmmaker. Banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s, she is best known for her 1966 Czech New Wave film Daisies. Among her subsequent films are Wolf's Hole, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989) and The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (1992). For her work, she received the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Czech Medal of Merit and the Czech Lion award.

Early life and education

Chytilová was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, on 2 February 1929. She had a strict Catholic upbringing, which would later come to influence many of the moral questions presented in her films.

While attending college in Brno, Chytilová initially studied philosophy and architecture, but abandoned these fields. She then worked as a draftswoman, a fashion model and as a photo re-toucher before working as a clapper girl for the Barrandov Film Studios in Prague. She then sought a recommendation from Barrandov Film Studios to study film production, but was denied. Undeterred by the rejection, she would later be accepted into the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) at the age of 28, While attending FAMU, she studied underneath renowned film director Otakar Vavra, before graduating in 1962.

Career Upon her graduation from FAMU, both of Chytilová's short films saw theatrical release throughout Czechoslovakia. In 1963, Chytilová released her first feature film entitled Something Different. , including a 1990s unrealised project using the Maries characters of Daisies.

Themes Like many Czech New Wave filmmakers, Chytilová was influenced by post-Stalin Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. Chytilová sought to display the hypocrisy of the government by presenting the complete opposite. Chytilová was anti-consumerist and called herself an individualist, rather than a feminist.

Women star in almost all of Chytilová's films and ideas of gender, sex, and power are at the central idea of her films.

Czech society was the primary focus of Chytilová's work, although the style of Czech New Wave filmmakers was to have international relevancy.

Chytilová's films before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia were highly experimental, known for psychedelic colors and nonlinear editing. Daisies and Fruits of Paradise can be characterized by absurdism and surrealism. The color filters and other experimental tactics Chytilová used were exclusive to her films of the 1960s.

Legacy

Chytilová described herself as a control freak and, "An overheated kettle that you can't turn down". Chytilová's "overheated" attitude made it difficult for her to gain work within the Soviet Union controlled film industry. She was known as being actively critical of the Soviet Union, stating that "My critique is in the context of the moral principles you preach, isn't it? A critical reflection is necessary". Chytilová used observations of everyday life in accordance with allegories and surreal contexts to create a personalized film style that is greatly influenced by the French New Wave, and Italian neorealism. Josef Škvorecký states that, "In a true feminist tradition Vera combined intensive intellectual effort with a feminine feeling for beauty and form".

Selected filmography Year Title Director Screenplay Story MusicNotes 1961 The Ceiling 1962 A Bagful of Fleas 1963 Something Different 1966 "At the World Cafeteria" in Pearls of the Deep 1966 Daisies 1970 Fruit of Paradise 1976 The Apple Game 1981 Calamity 1981 Chytilová Versus Forman − Consciousness of Continuity 1983 The Very Late Afternoon of a Faun 1984 Prague: The Restless Heart of Europe 1987 Wolf's Hole 1987 The Jester and the Queen 1988 A Hoof Here, a Hoof There 1990 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a Liberator 1991 My Citizens of Prague Understand Me 1992 The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday 1998 Traps 2000 Flights and Falls 2001 Exile from Paradise 2005 Searching for Ester 2006 Pleasant Moments