Jan Schmidt

He got to FAMU detour through medical studies and he was one from the famous generation of Otakar Vávra. Already at school and then even after finishing school he formed a tandem with screenwriter Pavel Juráček, they shot together, also valued abroad Kafka esque parable about Stalinist era Joseph Kilian (Postava k podpírání, 1963). In addition, he also directed unconventional sports documentaries. In August 1968 he found himself on the crew during filming in the Soviet Georgia, a romantic drama The Lanfier Colony (Kolonie Lanfieri 1969) could only be completed a year later. Normalization shifted his work to literary adaptations, but he still retained a sense of the action genre and boyish adventurism – for example in an impressive evocation of a private and social atmosphere of the fifties in The Return (Vracenky, 1990).