Otakar Vávra

Overview

In 2008, he ended his fifty-year lasting teaching career, even then he didn’t resign from the idea of another film. First film, The Light Penetrates the Darkness (Světlo proniká tmou), he made as a twenty-year young man in 1931 and since then there have been countless films made by him, feature films and documentaries. He worked in his adult life in all regimes, often as the first and always perfectly prepared director and as a screenwriter. There is no more controversial figure among Czech directors – the creator rising so many exciting emotions, who in the same time made so many key shots in the Czech cinematography. And who as a demanding teacher brought up so many students, his future competitors. He himself in contact with them also recovered, as evidenced by his movies Golden Queen (Zlatá reneta, 1965), Romance for Bugle (Romance pro křídlovku, 1966), The Thirteenth Chamber (Třináctá komnata, 1968) and Witches’ Hammer (Kladivo na čarodějnice, 1969).