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Jan Němec

Jan Němec

Directing

Biography

Jan Němec (12 July 1936 – 18 March 2016) was a Czech filmmaker whose most important work dates from the 1960s. Film historian Peter Hames has described him as the "enfant terrible of the Czech New Wave."

Known For

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A neon heart installed above Prague Castle illuminated the city for the last three months of Václav Havel’s presidency in an artist’s tribute to his extraordinary service. His last major undertaking was hosting the NATO summit in 2002 and Němec was granted extraordinary access to film it. Set to make a “special poetic film”, it took Němec years to process what he had witnessed – George W. Bush creating an alliance to invade Iraq. It may then be the director’s revenge to point his camera lens democratically at everyone involved with the summit, giving the same screen time to kitchen and waiting staff, musicians, security detail and NATO protesters, as to the heads of states and attending dignitaries. Havel however, became as much of a subject as the president on screen, and the film’s narrator, providing commentary in his own voice from the distance of a few years after he left the office.

Heart Above the Castle

2008Movie
Searching for Ester
8.0

Ester Krumbachová - a costume designer, screenwriter, director; one of the boldest personalities of the Czech New Wave. She worked in theatre, she was a writer and an illustrator. She co-created films such as O slavnosti a hostech (1966), Sedmikrásky (1966), Vsichni dobrí rodáci (1969), Pension pro svobodné pány (1968), Valerie a týden divu (1970), Slamený klobouk (1972) and many others. In the 1960s, she was a 'pivot' of the art scene in Prague, attracting artists who were on the threshold of their career, just setting out to find their own form of self-realization. Those who underwent her tutelage remember her forever. Director Vera Chytilová talks to those who knew Ester Krumbachová, who worked with her, befriended her, loved her. She sets off on a search that is to end by answering the question: Who was Ester?

Searching for Ester

2005Movie