Jan Pinkava
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Jan Jaroslav Pinkava (born June 21, 1963, Prague) is the director and writer of the Pixar Oscar-winning short film Geri's Game and the originator and co-director of Pixar's 2007 film Ratatouille.
He is the third child of the Czech polymath Jan Křesadlo. The family emigrated to Britain in 1969, where he obtained British citizenship.
After some early prize-winning successes in animation competitions as a teenager (most notably when he won the Young Film-Maker's Competition of the Year Award 1980 on the long-running BBC 2 children's quiz series Screen Test for his animated short "The Rainbow", hailed in 2001 by ex-Screen Test presenters Michael Rodd and Brian Trueman as "the only occasion in the history of the competition (1969 to 1984) where we came across a piece of film that was spectacularly professional", he went on to study Computer Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours and obtained his PhD, before resuming a career in Computer Animation. In 1993 he joined Pixar, and moved to the USA. His 'Arrows' TV commercial for Listerine won the Gold Clio Award in 1994.
[edit] External links
- Pinkava's website (in Czech)
- Biography
- Jan Pinkava at the Internet Movie Database
- Jan Pinkava interview at the official Pixar website
- Jan Pinkava interview at ASIFA-SF March 1998, shortly before his Oscar, very informative
Categories: Czech people stubs | United States film biography stubs | Pixar people | 1963 births | Animators | Czech animators | Czech expatriates | British animators | American animators | American film directors | Alumni of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth | Living people | People from Prague | English-language film directors