Vojtech Jasny (born 1925) is widely considered to be the finest of Czechoslovakia's important postwar generation of filmmakers. As mentor to Milos Forman and Ivan Passer, and their predecessor at the renowned Prague Film School, his influence on the Czech New Wave of the 1960s was profound. Jasny's pivotal 1958 film Desire established his reputation as a lyrical stylist; historians Mira and Antonin Liehm have called it “the first auteur film in Czech cinema.” The technically inventive satire Cassandra Cat (1963) won Special Jury Prize at Cannes and six years later, Jasny's masterpiece All My Good Countrymen took the Cannes Best Director award. Living in self-imposed exile from Czechoslovakia since 1968, Jasny has made films in Austria and West Germany and currently teaches, along with Milos Forman, in the Film Department at Columbia University. Our tribute to Vojtech Jasny continues Saturday, March 9. All My Good Countrymen will be repeated at the York Theater, San Francisco, on March 10 with Mr. Jasny in person.
