Jaromil Jireš

Who was Jaromil Jireš?

Jaromil Jireš was a director associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave movement.

During the 1960s, Jireš was often in conflict with censors, limiting his output. His 1963 film The Cry was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. It is often described as the first film of the Czechoslovak New Wave, a movement known for its dark humor, use of non-professional actors, and "art-cinema realism".

Another of Jireš's prominent works is The Joke, adapted from a novel by Milan Kundera. The Joke tells the story of Ludvik Jahn, a man expelled from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party for an idle joke to his girlfriend, and the revenge he later seeks through adultery. The film was produced during the political liberalization of the 1968 Prague Spring and contains many scenes which satirize and criticize the country's communist leadership. Released after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the film had initial success in theaters but was then banned by authorities for the next twenty years. Amos Vogel wrote that the film was "possibly the most shattering indictment of totalitarianism to come out of a Communist country".