Jaromil Jireš

Jaromil Jireš (1935-2001) was a Czech writer and director and one of the founding figures of the Czech New Wave. Born in Bratislava, he began his film career at the end of the 1950s. His feature debut, The Cry (1963), has been cited as one of the first New Wave films to emerge from Czechoslovakia, thanks to its bleak sense of humour and concern for ordinary protagonists. In 1969, Jireš worked with author Milan Kundera on an adaptation of the latter’s novel The Joke; although the film was produced during the brief lapse in censorship that accompanied the “Prague Spring” in 1968, it was released only after Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia, and was promptly banned until the fall of communism. Keen to remain in his home country, Jireš turned to less politically risky territory and continued to work intermittently over the next two decades. His films include Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), My Love to the Swallows (1971), and The Young Man and Moby Dick (1979).