Jiří Brdečka
Biography
Jiří Brdečka (24 December 1917 – 2 June 1982) was a Czech writer, artist, and film director. Brdečka was born in Hranice (then in Austria-Hungary) to a literary family, as his father, Otakar Brdečka (1881 – 1930), was a writer under the pseudonym Alfa. Brdečka studied philosophy and aesthetics at Charles University in Prague until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia forced the closing of the school in 1939. He then became an administrative clerk at the Prague Municipal Museum and found occasional work as a newspaper journalist and cartoonist. He worked as a press agent for the studio Lucernafilm from summer 1941 to the end of 1942. In 1943 Brdečka took a job as an animator, and by 1949 he was working as a film director and screenwriter at Barrandov Studios. He began directing animated films on his own in 1958. In addition to his film work he also worked as a journalist, a film critic and a novelist. Brdečka's work is marked by its droll intellectual humor, often featuring an extensive use of hyperbole, satire, and literary illusions.
Known For & Full Filmography4 Titles
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
When famous detective Nick Carter visits Prague, he becomes involved in strange case of a missing dog and even stranger carnivorous plant. He becomes convinced that he is standing against his greatest enemy, the Gardener, who supposedly died years ago in a swamp...
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly subject to the voice of others.
Movie - 1963, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
In the Hussite times, religious truth was sifted even on the tips of weapons. When in 1430 the Hussites set out on a raid to Nuremberg, the so-called Spanila Cavalry, to defend their doctrine, the young commander of the cavalry, the landowner Keřský, whose bride had once been kidnapped by a vicious crusader, saw it as an opportunity for personal revenge. Although Oldřich Daněk has tried to establish a distinctive interpretation of historical events, he reflects on where the blinded desire to punish a bad deed with further cruelty leads, but his version seems too thesis-like and lifeless, it does not rise above the descriptively illustrated scenes from old Czech chronicles...
Movie - 2017, 2h 15m • as Himself (archive footage)
Lemonade Joe, The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, Dinner for Adele, The and the Golem - These and other Czech cinematography film hits have on thing in common: Jirí Brdecka. The Screenwriter, writer and cartoonist Brdecka was known in Czechoslovakia for his cooperation with Jirí Trnka, Jan Werich or Oldrich Lipský, and became a worldwide famous and respected director of animated films. But who was he in reality? Where did he seek inspiration and where did his rich inner world come from? How did he fight the non-free political regime and manage to show the world his free and timeless creation? Director Miroslav Janek gradually penetrates the interior of one of the most prominent personalities of Czech film and presents to the audience a miraculous world of animated paintings, graphics, oils, watercolors, frescoes and mosaics. On Christmas Eve in 2017, Jirí Brdecka would celebrate his 100th birthday.