"PRVNÍ VEØEJNOPRÁVNÍ ÈESTMÍR KOPECKÝ" "CZECH TELEVISION AND THE SLOVAK FILM INSTITUTE PRESENT" "THE GOLDEN SIXTIES" "MIROSLAV ONDØÍÈEK, cinematographer" "That's how it was then, like kids today playing computer games, there was nothing else back then for us but film." "That is, film was the only medium for us, we all loved it." "We spent our entire youth in the movies." "I started school in 1940, at the beginning of the war." "In my neighbourhood, Žižkov, we had Ponec, Aero, Deklarace." "And that's where we were, in the movies from dawn till dusk." "I'd see lots of films in a day." "There was this peculiar romance about it..." "Tábor Cinema, known as the Shack, was where I saw my first film." "For Tábor kept its doors open to the street." "It got hot in summer, so they wouldn't close the door." "And in winter, the chimney from the stove went right around... we naturally flocked around the stove." "Deklarace was the same." "But in the summer when Tábor opened its doors, we did not have to pay." "As kids we looked on from the street." "Film fascinated me so much... that I even crept behind the screen to take a look." "I had great parents." "My dad bought me an 8mm Pathé projector." "Today a camera like that would cost you a mint, when they sell it in Munich." "I wanted it so badly." "My mum died early, February 25, 1950, and she never knew that I would be in the movies." "Today I am glad for it..." "Each time life deals you a blow, you will find that it also helped you, on the other hand." "Mum was sick and we had to close down her shop." "There was the so-called walk of shame." "The founders of the Communist Party and the working class would sit in the pub and either they let you live or they didn't." "And they made everyone go through this." "Why, in 1949 they closed down 6000 tradesmen in Prague." "Mum wanted me to enroll in the Academy of Commerce in Resslova Street - the Academy of Dr. Eduard Beneš." "I think they have reinstated the name now." "I passed the exams, but sent me a letter" "saying that with my family background I should get closer to the working class." "So I got a job at the labor exchange in 1949, they asked whether I had any experience in film." "They sent me to ETA, a factory in Prague 10 that manufactured cameras." "There were 600 of us with the wrong backgrounds." "They were already full." "When I got before the committee, they told me they had a final vacancy." "It was Malik Co." "In Žižkov who produced this stuff for labs." "Sort of dirty work." "So I enlisted as an unqualified laborer." "Back then we all did these so-called psychoanalytical tests." "And curiously, these tests took place near St. Henry's where the Central Office for Cinema was." "We took tests in maths, loading planks, that sort of nonsense." "And the committee decreed that I could not apply for work in film, as my hands sweat." "If your hands sweat, you can't work with film stock." "Another thing I found rich, during the war the SS headquarters were posted in this Central Office building." "And my uncle had a pub at the corner of Jindøišská and Rùžová Streets." "Now he was a Sokol member, an officer of the Czechoslovak Army, and was in the underground army." "We didn't know, for he naturally did not tell us until after the war." "He had a printing press in a barrel and throughout the war he published the Odbory (Unions) magazine, which he then gave me." "And when the revolution started..." "he started sniping, single-handedly waging a war with those SS across his garden." "So this was a corner of Prague I haunted before I went to Barrandov." "Barrandov enlisted a team every year, before us they had Saša Rašilov, Milota." "Then there were us, with Honza Eisner." "They enlisted eight of us." "At the same time, we took courses in graphic art." "And since documentary film needed ads, they mostly looked to us." "For the path to the camera always lead via the labs." "Even before FAMU, the Prague Film School, a number of Czech DPs started out in the labs." "Peèenka, Stallich, all of them, only Roth came from theater, he was a light technician." "It was Honza Eisner who got me into documentary film." "We were great pals, so he recommended me." "Later I worked as news assistant." "There we had a DP called Robek, who'd survived concentration camp, a sharp, quick guy," "with great poise." "For instance, we were at this tower at Sparta... shooting the arrival of the Peace Race from Warsaw, we had this telephoto lens, 300mm, and he chain-smoked." "They were already announcing the racers coming in, Veselý, Rùžièka..." "And all of a sudden a screw in this pivot just fell out." "I panicked - what now?" "And Robek looked through the camera and said, "Roll!", and as they announced racers coming through the gate, he took out matches, broke off a piece, and said, "Stick it in."" "So I stuck it in and pulled focus with those matches." "There was also another DP, Pajer." "An older gent, very refined." "Back in 1945 the astronomical clock burned down, and professor Sucharda made new figures for the clock, in a studio in the Letná district." "We visited him there, and he had the apostles standing in a circle on a paper sheet." "While lighting it," "I kept saying," ""Mr. Pajer, you have all these shadows here!", and he said, "Where there is light, there is always shadow."" "This is in fact where I started thinking in terms of film." "In terms of the architecture of light in cinema, or tonality." "Where you don't know where the light is coming from." "For when you know where it is coming from that's what they call in America flash lighting," "that is like lighting with torches." "Where they put the main light on the actor..." "I couldn't stand that." "Those are theatrical devices, or photographic, to just keep using main light, back light, and fills." "Peèenka we admired, for that was poetry." "And you see, we are the generation of Šrámek, Moon over the River..." "MOON OVER THE RIVER, Dir." "Václav Krška, 1953 Camera:" "Ferdinand Peèenka" "River... the river and some fields afar, and woods..." " And nothing more?" " Some tall chimney stack." "That's the brewery." " Fascinating." " And what about the river?" "What about it... it flows along, humming along..." "The sun shines over it." "That is no miracle, as is no miracle that I wear trousers." "And are you sure you wear trousers?" "When we first saw Moon Over the River, it opened in Blaník cinema," "Honza and I went walking up and down Wenceslas Square until 7 am, when it was time to go to Barrandov." "We kept talking about the film all night." "It came as a shock." "Tuzar was a master at creating the architecture of light in film." "He worked in Poland, made Canal with Wajda." "He was an important European DP." "He taught me a lot, how to work with a camera and film stock." "He made all his devices himself." "He had this workshop, a studio at Národní, where he made these lights and fixtures." "He was fantastic with his hands." "Back then, you read light with a photometer." "One lux amounted to one candle;" "it looked like a little violin, and he kept saying, "Point it at the light."" "And as the hand pointed how many lux, I dropped it on the floor." "And though at the time I was no mere apprentice, he jumped up and slapped my face and stopped the shoot." "But one could use it to this day, if you were able to slap someone." "And I never could, pity." "I did not learn that from him." "Well, so that was Mr. Tuzar." "But I won't hear a word said against him." "When we were making Amadeus, he came to see me in the theater, he was 85 then," "and he was so happy that he cried." "I could see he had passed the torch on." "It was really moving." "The way they made films in Bohemia, take The Great Seclusion..." "It was black and white, they wanted to shoot in rain and clouds." "The whole story was kind of gloomy... and the sun just kept shining, the sky was blue." "I was there for three weeks, and for three weeks we shot a scene of the man driving the horses to the cooperative." "The horses stop, the man gets down..." "and there is some conflict there." "All we did was get up at 2 am, or after midnight, go to the set, with the dolly ready." "We set up the camera before the sun came up, and we had ten, fifteen minutes to shoot the scene." "The horses were like in a circus, they had their marks, and in order not to shift them they were made of tin lids hammered to the ground, so they would stop exactly there..." "we did this for three weeks." "And there were all these extras and chickens to take care of, and so Ivan Passer basically left right after supper, going from village to village to wake up all the extras to make sure they would be on the village green on time." "Looking at it from the perspective of technology today, the way films are made today it was just unreal." "Ouvrez-les cages!" "THE WHITE DOVE, Dir." "František Vláèil Camera:" "Jan Èuøík, 1960" "Vláèil was really something." "DP Jan Èuøík would say," ""Working for him is delightful slavery."" "That was Vláèil for you." "Honza Nìmeèek was the camera operator." "I was focus puller." "The studio of the artist character was up at Kotva." "Koblasa did the sculpture, Pištìk painted the picture." "Vláèil had a great talent for fine arts." "We would go to shoot the spires, and he'd give us a sketch of them with times when we were to shoot." "He was no God, he just had ideas, but he could not predict when we'd be there and there'd be no sun." "And we had to shoot." "Nobody would pay us to stand there waiting for the sun for 2 weeks." "We had a hard time filming the dove leaving the studio." "I lived in No. 7 Truhláøská Street." "So I took the camera home, and for a month I went there every Sunday, let a pigeon out, and film." "They would always fly down." "At last, one careened down, then turned and rose against the buildings, flying up... that only happened once." "We were filming in East Germany." "That was my first time abroad." "And to go to West Berlin, we founded a group of Friends of the Soviet Union." "We enrolled as members, they gave us cards and we could go and make The White Dove." "That's how things were." "But you know what is interesting... people no longer talk about this." "They remember it like," ""Military service was awful, but we had fun, too."" "You see, man is conditioned to forget the bad stuff." "All that remains are the good stories." "THE AUDITION, Dir." "Miloš Forman Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek, 1963" "Our fathers, that is, our teachers, took film out of the sets." "With Audition, people get it wrong." "We never actually shot in Semafor Theater." "It takes place at the Baa department store, and in this Bulgarian restaurant in Wenceslas Square." "That's where we shot, in the basement." "That's where we got offered to do The Audition." "THE AUDITION, Dir." "Milo Forman, 1963 Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek" "So, you play the piano." "Say, would you play us something?" "Alright." "And what is it you are going to play?" " But I really can't play anything." "Honest." " But you must know something." "How else would you know that you play the piano?" "Ok, but I'll make a lot of mistakes." "We started shooting the Semafor Theatre moving up the street to the Nový Theater." "We shot this opening sequence" "and the lines of people with this East German camera, which had a Zeiss lens," "but was kind of clumsy." "When we had the footage, there was a Mr. Veselý, head of Barrandov Studios, to whom we basically owe our careers, since he put up the money for the print." "With Milo we took the footage by train to Zlín, where they printed it;" "we showed it to Veselý." "Ivan Passer worked on the script too, and they gave us 300,000 to make The Audition." "We got a crew, soundman, lighting engineer, and made The Audition." " My name is ubrtová." " But I need Køesadlová." "Køesadlová!" "Vláèil made drawings of everything." "And everyone always wanted me to storyboard it all too." "But we never did that." "Milo would rehearse a scene." "And that's why I think it is not just photography, we always followed the story." "Each scene has its crucial angles." "Every dialogue needs to underpin one thing, suppress another." "There's meaningless drivel..." "then a fast line, the crucial one." "You have a five-minute scene, with just one line in it." "We would determine how to do the scene, rehearse, fix the angle." "And off we went." "The way we worked together, it went like a charm." " Now, your name please, on the mic." " Køesadlová." "I am sorry, I won't sing, I changed my mind." " But why?" " Please don't be angry." "Goodbye." "As for If It Weren't for Music..." "someone had the idea that if you put it together with The Audition, you had a feature, well, and that's where Milo Forman and Ivan Passer got the idea..." "That was the first screen appearance of Mr. Vostrèil and the Kolín brass band." "IF IT WEREN'T FOR MUSIC, Dir." "Milo Forman Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek, 1963" "You must put your heart in it." "You cannot so much as slice a piece of bread without putting your heart in it." "Much less produce a sound on a horn." "Every musician must be young at heart!" "And young we are, right?" " Right." " And we still like the girls, though our hair has receded..." "But never mind that!" "We have hidden charms to make up for it..." "Film is not photography, film is life." "And I in fact always conveyed life, not photographs." "I essentially produced lights." "I shone light on umbrellas." "I would manufacture lighting devices." "In Loves of a Blonde I put a full chandelier above the dancers," "I would rarely use the basic lighting unit with a light stand." "The so-called lighting unit, with 5 or 10 kilowatts." "I rarely used those." "I am fond of young people." "With a passion for music!" "Why, there is nothing more beautiful then music!" "But I guess you have other interests." "I will not try to persuade you." "Go where you heart is calling!" "We do not need you." "No, off you go." "I don't want to see you again." "Milo mostly said, "Move on, don't let them hang around there."" "We had to be always ready." "For we just kept shooting all the time!" "I will tell you a sweet secret." "They all play Milo." "I've said this for the first time, on camera." "For that's how it is." "He recited the dialogue, told them how he wanted them to say it, where the emphasis was." "All of them are playing Forman." "INTIMATE LIGHTING, Dir." "Ivan Passer, 1965 Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek, Josef Støecha" "Grandma!" " What is it?" " What is this hen doing here?" " What, again?" " There, you see." "It looks like it wants to hatch that vehicle of ours." "Off with you!" "Damnit, I keep telling you not to put it here." "Kája, leave it alone, you are going to hurt it!" "These hens are all over the place." "No matter where you go, you step on something." " It's not such a big deal." " Look at the state of that car!" "This is not a garage, it's a henhouse!" "It's not just your car, anyway." "We put 20,000 towards it!" " You were the one who came here with nothing!" " As you keep reminding me." "Well, you need to be reminded." "You seem to have forgotten that." "It's not as if I put in no work here." " I nearly destroyed my hands!" " But now you have a house!" "A house, yeah." "This was the last time the hen got here." "Oh come on." "One egg adds up to another..." "Ivan, he was a sweet guy." "We still call one another regularly, at least once a month." "Wherever he is, for years now." "Ivan was great." "For one..." "He was always authentic." "Like in The Audition... when the girl plays that piano, that was his idea." "He always found the essence of a thing." "He was great." "INTIMATE LIGHTING" "You may not know this, Miss, but Grandpa and I had eloped." "And I knew him but three days!" "They came with a circus." "My parents put a warrant out for me." "But by then I was already in France." "I can laugh about it now, but poor mama." "Now, try this." "Properly!" "On the set of Intimate Lighting we had this passion, for playing badminton." "As we waited for the right weather, at that village house." "We kept score, and we were up to 1151, 1152... and all of a sudden this big limo pulls up and ebor and Bor, heads of the production unit get out and are like, "Well, well, lads,"" "They took Ivan and go walking down the path towards the woods, and next they took me..." ""Boys, we put so much trust in you." "And all you do is fool around." "The whole crew sitting around doing nothing." "Playing badminton."" "You know what I am saying?" "That divine coolness of Passer's, the poise." "How he was always there, how lucid he was when filming." "There are great things in that film." "INTIMATE LIGHTING" " This is where mine will be one day." " Hush!" "Now listen to the concerto!" "I know this." " He's really bad." " I'm fed up with him." "They weren't happy allowing Ivan to make Intimate Lighting;" "when he said he would do it with me, now that was too much." "This was Harnach, the head of Barrandov Studios." "And on the Communist side was Franta Valert, a DP." "Harnach said, if the DPs give their stamp of approval, we let you do the film." "They invited us to a meeting at the film club, with all the DPs in attendance." "They had a vote." "I don't remember exactly, but I think everyone raised their hand that I was not to do it." "Even my own colleagues!" "Well, it was embarrassing, depressing." "And they all knew me, by then I had been in the business for like 15 years." "Stallich asked me at that meeting," ""And where did you come from?" "I don't seem to remember you."" "Støecha approached us," ""Guys, you do what you want." "All I care about is the money."" "He took the job and covered for us." "We made the film, and he was fantastic." "He was almost like a dad to me." "Thanks to him I went to England, for I had to leave while they shot the last scene, where they exercise in bed." "And he finished it for me." "I was not there for that." "11, 12, 13, 14..." "Are we going to get a divorce over that eggnog?" "Wait!" "Don't tell me to wait." "Hold on, I say!" "Damnit, they really are at it!" "That's where I started to grow a beard." "We picked a cemetery near Tábor, for the most beautiful scene." "And it just kept raining." "We couldn't shoot." "So Ivan and I agreed I wouldn't shave until we shot it." "Well, it has been 51 years." "41, that is, I can no longer count..." "But the beauty of it was it was all shot on contact sound, in the car, as they drive after the procession, so we had this Debrie camera in the car." "Now a Debrie is huge, and it opens like this." "We had to take it outside when we wanted to reload... it wasn't easy." "LOVES OF A BLONDE, Dir." "Milo Forman, 1965 Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek" "It happened during Loves of a Blonde." "He called me from Karlovy Vary, where he showed This Sporting Life." "Lindsay had told the organizers he wanted to see a film shoot." "So they took him to several productions including the location in Zruè, where we were shooting Loves of a Blonde." "He was supposed to go back that evening, but he stayed." "He played billiards with us." "He stayed for a week." "He was always on set, watching, not saying a word." "We wrapped, Milo was editing Saturday, Sunday, at the weekend." "So he says to Lindsay," ""If you like, we have a screening on Tuesday morning."" "And Lindsay goes, "Really?" "Well, I'm coming."" "So Anderson came to Barrandov with his translator and saw the film." "We went to the club, I was at a table with Evald Schorm, shooting the breeze." "Lindsay came up to us with his translator, and says," ""I would like you to shoot my film in England." The White Bus." ""What do you say?" "Would you be up for it?"" "You could have knocked me over with a feather." "I said, "That's crazy, I can't speak a word of English." "What would I do there?"" "And Evald Schorm leans to me," ""Tell him you're on." "I'll smash your face if you don't."" "So I said I was on and went to England." "The whole crew saw me off at the airport..." "Kuèera, Èuøík, Chytilová, Jire, Papouek..." "I have a picture somewhere, couldn't find it." "I took my seat in that caravel and thought I'd be better off if the plane crashed, than if they sent me home disgraced." "We started shooting in Manchester, in a huge barn of a library." "I had to light it a lot, it was dark." "They found me a translator, they called him Edgar." "He was a former journalist for Rudé Právo, the official newspaper, who emigrated to England and kept nagging at me to buy the car that he brought over, for my food money..." "he wore a nylon mac and a beret." "I couldn't stand the guy." "He just bored my ear off." "Now we are in that car, Lindsay, the producer, and Edgar next to me." "I ventured to him I was worried about how it would all turn out." "And Lindsay and the producer turn around, "What are you guys talking about?"" "And this pseudo-bolshevik asshole says, "He says he is afraid he won't manage."" "And Lindsay and the producer turned," ""Well, if he doesn't, he can catch the afternoon plane home."" "But I also had to take exams in England." "Sure, I had to." "The unions required it." "The unions always safeguard the work they have." "They don't find you work, but they make sure you stay in a job." "In order to accept an alien, they always want a guarantee of employment, be it England or America." "They want a guarantee of professional record..." "It took Lindsay several months for the unions to approve me." "So I shot some tests, and four gentlemen I had never seen before came to the screening room, sat at the back, in the dark." "We had a chat, then they got up and Lindsay said," ""You passed, it's OK."" "These were veteran DPs who had approved me." "MARTYRS OF LOVE, Dir." "Jan Nìmec, 1966 Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek" "Me?" "Look, Honza Nìmec, the boys don't like to hear this, but in terms of Czech cinema he was a really striking filmmaker." "His vision is not dramatic so much as cinematic." "But Martyrs of Love, that's like drinking champagne." "It's like a party." "It's not storytelling, it's a party." "MARTYRS OF LOVE" "I needed to get as much contrast as possible." "We shot in black and white." "For it to work out," "I needed the people in the flat to wear not white, but yellow." "And the wallpaper was blue, which in the spectrum... exposes the least light." "So it's blue." "The color that exposes most light is silver, right." "Or yellow." "And so the set designer put in this silver paint roller pattern." "Fire!" "When you are approached to do a film, to photograph a story, you always have to outline the way you see it." "They either buy it or they put before you their own idea." "And you can't fit into this." "Because it cannot be done... that is why you are a director of photography, you vouch for it..." "Again, I am talking about films of the past millenium, or century, for technology today makes any idea possible." "But back then we were limited, mainly by filmstock, light sources, film sensitivity." "And this whole special effects section... well, DPs really had a dominant position there." "And now we live at a time when basically technology has stripped the camera function of its power." "Again it is about painting." "For you can touch up a film in post-production." "You can change the composition, you can zoom in and out, add movement, add this, reduce that." "Back then, you simply shot the stuff into the can... and that was what you had." "There was nothing you could do about it." "You see, today it is more and more just about characters, the aesthetics of it, for the technology is now... you have to know beforehand where you are going with it..." "THE FIREMEN'S BALL, Dir." "Milo Forman, 1967 Camera:" "Miroslav Ondøíèek" "Good evening, miss." " Miss..." " We are..." " On behalf of the ball committee..." " Wait a minute..." " Finish what you were saying..." "Miss, we are..." "If you would like to take part in a beauty contest..." "I mean you're alright, a decent good-looking girl." "So, what do you say?" "Originally it was to be black and white." "But I said we should shoot in color, but... well, that was tricky." "For it is shot in a single space, where you essentially do portraits of people." "As I say, cameramen should above all learn from the fine arts." "I needed a dark background." "But I couldn't just paint it all black." "In diffuse light, you can never tell..." "I needed to do something with the background, but couldn't figure out what shade to paint it." "And so Eda Kadeøábek, second cameraman and I took a walk," "I collected autumn leaves." "I picked a chestnut leaf, at Charles Square, right by the fountain." "It had the right color, so I took it to the painter Otèenáek," "who had a studio nearby." "And I solved it there." "If you look at Renaissance portraits... in Gothic paintings, the background is either blue or gold, but since then, all famous painters had it dark." "No matter who, it is always dark." "So that is how I figured it out." "We did it in dark brown." "Good evening." "I am a mother and I have come to check on you." "Is it true?" "My girl keeps raving about some a beauty contest." "She is young, inexperienced," "One doesn't want her to get into trouble." "So I came to ask if it's true." "That is nice you came to see us." "You can be proud that your daughter has been chosen!" "Well if you like her, then I shall leave it up to you." "The next grief was costumes..." "Since people played in their own clothes," "The production manager went around and eliminated all cold tones." "There are no cold tones in the film." "Another key point was the firemen's uniforms." "They were blue-green and looked terribly vulgar." "So I went to a factory in Tanvald, had them make grey cloth," "of which the uniforms are made." "Attention!" "A beauty contest, I say!" "You dirty old lechers!" "Out of here!" "I am a filmmaker." "I always approached film as a whole." "For instance when Milo first came up with the idea..." "I would go to the Firemen's Museum in Vinohrady." "Their emblem that we enlarged..." "I still have it at home." "The museum gave it to me." "It was from that time." "I wanted there to be this historical reminiscence." "So that large emblem behind the bandstand was given to me at the museum." "Good evening." "I apologise." "I went home for my swimsuit." " What is that?" " A swimsuit." "You have it on you?" "Wait, what are you doing?" "Let her..." "Come on, we can't have a girl take her clothes off!" "Leave her..." "Hold that door, so no one comes bothering us." "Go ahead." "I had a 25 and 75mm, the two basic lenses I chose for the entire film." "I did this on all my films." "Including Ragtime and Amadeus." "I don't like changing lenses, and I used the zoom lens sparingly." "Technology is too intrusive." "Technology always takes something away... you see that it does things to you in a cinema... the same when you build a tracking shot," "where the background passes by more quickly than the actor." "You spin around like on a carousel." "That is the difference between photography and camerawork." "And when you tell stories, as I did... with the guys... it was always human stories." "Where you can't go heavy on technical stuff." "Go ahead..." "Come on, get up on stage!" " Keep playing, what's wrong?" " Should we play the same thing?" "Well, what else." "Bartoová, I can see you." "The production bought the house." "The firemen came in, pyrotechnicians and all." "They cleaned it up." "And it just didn't burn." "We were there for two hours and it just would't burn." "So we stopped shooting, pushed it back a week." "And again..." "They brought in barrels of oil, sprayed petrol all over... we had two hours to film it and now the house burned so fast." "Milo ran around frantically, me with a sound camera, it was crazy." "But we made it." "THE FIREMEN'S BALL" "Step aside a little!" "I am standing here so he can't see his house burn down!" "Shame on you that you let him watch it." " Turn him around at least!" " Grandpa, come on, turn around." "Sit, grandpa." " He keeps looking anyway." " No wonder, his house is on fire!" "We lived in this magical moment." "The Sixties were... notjust here, but everywhere." "England, France, America..." "students marched... in France they had fighting in the streets..." "Milo was swinging on a curtain in Cannes." "This was the Sixties." "We were a part of that too." "But there was never much fighting in our neck of the woods, instead it was happening on an intellectual level, in literature, and above all, in cinema..." "You see, we were different." "When we arrived in Paris, in 1967, they put it in twos and threes." "And two or three months we traveled cinemas, showing Pearls of the Deep Loves of a Blonde, Intimate Lighting." "Viewers were thrilled to see that even under socialism were people with problems of their own." "We had these discussions Ever night, so many times... if you look at how many directors of all kinds of nationalities" "I worked with..." "I lost track." "But I am not nostalgic." "That's rubbish." "Nostalgia makes one old." "To the contrary, I work with the young guys, 7 of them at FAMU, and I have a whole school in Písek." "One has to find a way of fighting this dictatorship of technology." "To use it." "You see, it is seductive." "It throws cinema as such into this fairytale realm." "But the fantasy is deceptive." "For every generation lives in a reality with problems of its own, which define it." "And they just run away from it to fantasy land." "At Christmas I talked with my crew in New York, all of them retired." "And Erik, who did 7 films with me told me" ""Mirek, the filmmakers are gone." "With us gone, they are no more."" "Today all you have is DVD." "A DVD that you get when you buy a paper... and here it's the same." "Since the late 1970s, Miroslav Ondøíèek was once more allowed to work abroad." "His work with M. Forman, G.R. Hill, M. Nichols, or P. Marshall ranked him among the world's elite cinematographers." "At present, he is teaching at the Prague Film School (FAMU), as well as being president of the Czech Film and Television Academy, and a patron of the Miroslav Ondøíèek Film Academy in Písek." "Written by Jan Luke" "Directed by Martin ulík"