Juraj Jakubisko

Biography

Jakubisko’s first feature, “Crucial Years” (1967), begins and ends with village rituals, and the funeral rite in it is shown almost as in a documentary. He had known such rites since childhood: he was born on 30 April 1938 in Kojšov, into a Rusyn family.

The family later moved to Košice, where Slovaks, Hungarians, Rusyns, Jews and Czechs lived side by side. At the Čas cinema he watched comedies by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. By his own recollection, in a Dominican church local postmen staged tableaux vivants of biblical scenes alongside images of Lenin and Stalin. He later turned this juxtaposition into one of the devices of his poetics.

He went to the secondary school of applied arts in Bratislava: he was admitted to the graphics department but transferred to photography. There he became friends with Elo Havetta, a future director. He then taught photography at a school of applied arts and worked for television in Košice. In 1960 he moved to Prague and entered FAMU, the Prague film and television school, where he studied directing and later added cinematography. He graduated in 1965 (by other accounts, in 1966). He made short films (“Every Day Has a Name”, “Silence”, “Rain”, “Waiting for Godot”), assisted Věra Chytilová on “Ceiling” and helped Jaromil Jireš with a screenplay. After his studies he worked briefly at the Laterna Magika theatre under Alfréd Radok.

“Crucial Years” won awards in Mannheim (the FIPRESCI prize and the Josef von Sternberg Award) and the Czechoslovak film critics’ prize for 1967. His second film, “Deserters and Pilgrims” (1968), consists of three stories about three wars. Jakubisko operated the camera himself; in Venice it received an award for young artists. The film was soon locked away. “Birds, Orphans and Fools” (1969), shot during the chaotic months of the Prague Spring, lay on the shelf until 1991. The fourth, “See You in Hell, Friends”, was stopped in 1970. The footage was handed to an Italian producer, who edited it his own way; the director disowned that version and finished his own only in 1990.

From 1971 he was forbidden to make feature films and worked at the short film studio in Bratislava. There he made “The Construction of the Century” (1972), on which he was director, cinematographer and writer, and “The Red Cross Drummer” (1977), a commissioned film that stood out for its visual power. “Three Sacks of Cement and a Live Rooster” (1976) was shown only two years after it was finished. He was allowed to make a feature again in 1979, with “Build a House, Plant a Tree”. The script was assigned to him ready-made, and he rewrote it with Lubor Dohnal; Dohnal’s name does not appear in the credits, so as not to harm him. After a good reception in Amsterdam the film was banned. After that he was permitted only historical films, fairy tales and comedies.

“The Millennial Bee” (1983) came out of these restrictions, a family saga based on the novel by Peter Jaroš, whose action reaches 1917. It played in cinemas for many weeks running and won awards in Seville and Venice. Next came the fairy tale “The Feather Fairy” (1985), with Giulietta Masina, the wife of Federico Fellini, with whom the director was friends, and a television series from which “Freckled Max and the Spooks” (1987) was assembled. Three months before the fall of the communist regime, “Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself” (1989) was released. It won the Grand Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1990. In the same year “See You in Hell, Friends” finally had its premiere.

In 1991 he and his wife, the actress and producer Deana Horváthová, founded the company Jakubisko Film. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 he lived in Prague. There he made “An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World” (1997), a satire based on the prophecies of Nostradamus, which won four Czech Lions, and “Post Coitum” (2004). In 1992 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament at the head of the Slovak branch of the Civic Democratic Party. “Bathory” (2008) was his first English-language film and the most expensive production in the history of Czech and Slovak cinema. It premiered at Karlovy Vary on 10 July 2008, and in Slovakia it became the highest-grossing film of all time.

In 2000 critics and journalists named him the best Slovak director of the 20th century. In 2003 he received the Pribina Cross, Second Class, and in 2008 the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary. From 2001 he taught at FAMU, and in 2017 he became a professor there. He painted, and showed his pictures in Paris, Berlin, Prague and Bratislava, including at the Presidential Palace. In 2013 the first volume of his autobiography, “Živé stříbro” (“Living Silver”), was published. He died in Prague on 24 February 2023. A few months later “Perinbaba: Two Realms” was released, a sequel to the film he had been working on.