Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko has died at the age of 84. He was one of the most famous Slovak filmmakers and was nicknamed the "Fellini of the East". During his career he made dozens of feature films and documentaries. Among his best-known works are The Millennial Bee, The Feather Fairy, An Ambiguous Report about the End of the World, and a film Bathory. In 2008, Juraj Jakubisko was awarded the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival for his outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema. On KVIFF.TV you can watch another of Jakubisko's outstanding films - Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself, which competed for the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival in 1989.
The Prague FAMU graduate made her debut with her first feature film, The Prime of Life, in 1967. Films such as The Deserter and the Nomads, Birdies, Orphans and Fools and See You in Hell, Friends, full of poetry, metaphors and symbols, which he used to return to his native Eastern Slovakia and to the people there, were banned by the normalisers in communist Czechoslovakia. Jakubisko, who originally wanted to be a visual artist and cameraman, could then only make documentaries. He returned to cinema screens in 1979 with the film Build a House, Plant a Tree.
In the 1990s, he made It's Better to Be Wealthy and Healthy Than Poor and Ill and An Ambiguous Report about the End of the World, which was screened at more than 60 festivals worldwide and won four Czech Lions.
The adaptation of the legend of the Lady of Čachtice Bathory, which, with a budget of about CZK 350 million, was one of the most expensive films in the Czech Republic and Central Europe, won Jakubisko the Czech Lion for Best Art Direction and became the most successful film of 2008.
Jakubisko's last completed film is a fairy tale. Jakubisko postponed the premiere of The Feather Fairy and the Two Worlds due to the covid, and edited and improved his new film until the last minute, but according to the distribution company Bontonfilm, it is ready for this year's premiere. No exact date has been set.
