Jan Němec
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Jan Němec (July 12, 1936, Prague) is a Czech filmmaker.
Němec began his storied life as a filmmaker in the late 1950s when he attended FAMU, the Czechoslovakian state film school in Prague. At this time, Czechoslovakia was ruled by a Soviet-controlled puppet government and artistic and public expression was subject to extreme censorship and government review, and gave rise to underground, subversive and revolutionary movements throughout Prague and the country. It is this era in filmmaking, art and literature that has come to be known as the Czech New Wave. In the early 1960s, Němec directed the influential Holocaust-themed film, Diamonds of the Night. It was his first major success, and while it passed the censors' reviews, it helped lay the foundation for the political movement that was coming.
His most notorious work was A Report on the Party and the Guests. Its plot revolved around a group of friends on a picnic who are invited to a bizarre banquet by a charismatic sadist who eventually bullies them into blind conformity and brutality. Intended as as political allegory about communism, this film earned Němec the classification and dubious infamy of being "banned for life" by the government. This distinction was two-fold: it effectually cut off his ability to make films as it was illegal (or certainly dangerous) to work with, for or even associate with banned individuals; and it had the reverse effect of what was intended as it virually ensured everyone would find a way to see it. But banning Němec from working did not work either, however, as he continued to make films underground. Němec made his next-most important work, Oratorio for Prague, a documentary condemning the Soviets' actions in crushing the Prague Spring of 1968, and was originally released without credits so that its makers would escape punishment from the KGB.
Němec's work is characterized by its psychological depth and spontaneous visual approach. He continues to direct films in the Czech Republic.
