(February 23, 1938 -. September 5, 202)

Jiří Menzel was one of the defining voices of the Czechoslovak New Wave, which erupted during a period of de-Stalinisation and increased artistic freedom in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, only to be crushed with dramatic force by the end of the decade.

The Czechoslovak New Wave is regarded as a particularly fertile and influential period in film history when a group of young filmmakers “carried out an aesthetic-philosophical revolution in the Czech socialist cinema.”1 Its influence on film and filmmaking, even within Czechoslovakia alone, was far-reaching, as “film-makers of all generations were finally, for the first time, finding it possible to make films the way they wanted, the way they felt they should be made, and to arrive at some measure of self-realization.”