Jiří Vanýsek

“Yet we were so directed by the school atmosphere, that it was completely out of question anyone of us joined the communist party. I would say that the school was really anti-communistic. There was no member of the party or anyone taking it at all seriously. I believe that it was the most hard-core centre of anti-communism back in 1960s. Moreover, all the graduates before us were showing it in their works. There was such atmosphere, I remember that we had to attend a class of Marxism and a certain man came in to lecture us, and I think it was called the theory of culture, but actually it regarded mostly Marxism. And back then around 1966 in Moscow there was a process against two writers. They were imprisoned for writing their books and we were discussing with that man or a comrade, whether it is write or wrong to send people to prison for their works. And he was defending it quite weakly. And we kept attacking him and it all ended up by him running out of the lecture room. He got upset, took his stuff and ran out. And we were oh so excited to manage something like that. Vávra (note: Otakar Vávra, a director and a FAMU pedagogue back than), he must have heard of it somewhere or he was notified about the fact his students were misbehaving and really told us off. But not for what we said, but for getting revealed in such a way. That it will be recorded in our materials and that we were totally dumb for doing such nonsense and so on.“

„It was 1972 and we were shooting in April or May. Then we did a series called The village is jolly. I was just in the cutting room. Then the secretary came in and brought movies. And there was my old movie from 1968 regarding the political students’ movements. It was called the Forecast partly sunny. And I asked her: ‚Why is this here? What for?‘ And she said: ‚Well sadly it will be screened for the commission.‘ And at that moment I figured what was going to happen further on. That the movie is going to be projected for it was labelled as flawed. And of course it was from the perspective of the former normalisation. Then I went to the commission and had to defend myself, why I shot it; and all those politically right-wing opportunist ideas in it and so on. Well it was a clownery. As we all knew, even I did, that we – there was more of us, who left I think about seven people – were all tipped at the central committee of the communist party for cadre materials. Of course they banned me to produce such movies and the commission concluded I could not work on TV. It was simply decided as I was the son of the professor Vanýsek and I was not a member of the communist party so I was the target. And so was my son at the psychiatry clinic, which he had to leave.”