Jan Němec

Jan Němec (1936–2016, Prague), Czech director, producer and teacher at FAMU. One of the leading figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave, he gave his debut with Diamonds of the Night (1964); in the same decade he created another of his masterpieces, The Party and the Guests (1966), which had the British magazine Films and Filming hailing him as one of the year’s top five directors. He was definitively banned from making films after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which became the subject of his internationally acclaimed documentary Oratorio for Prague (1968). From 1974 to 1989 he lived and worked in exile and, after his return home, he shot the majority of his films via his own company, Jan Němec – Film, established together with Iva Ruszeláková, whom he later married.

Source: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2016