Pavel Juráček

Screenwriter, Dramaturge, Director, Columnist, Prose Writer, Poet

Date of birth

2 August 1935

Place of birth

Příbram, Československo

Date of death

20 May 1989

Place of death

Praha, Československo

Alternative names

Pavel Čeněk Juráček (rodné jméno), Pavel Pecivál (pseudonym)

Biography

Pavel Juráček worked on many Czech New Wave movies as a screenwriter before he became a director. He completed only two features, one of which was banned for more than 20 years. Jurácek was born on August 2, 1935 in Příbram. After working for a local newspaper, in 1957 he enrolled at the Prague film school FAMU, where he studied dramaturgy. As a screenwriter he collaborated, among others, on the sci-fi Voyage to the End of the Universe (1963), Věra Chytilová’s Dadaist satire Daisies (1966) and the post-apocalyptic allegory The End of August at the hotel Ozone (1966). His first film as director was the medium-length Joseph Kilian (1963). That Kafkaesque portrait of everyday oddities, based on the hero's encounters with bureaucracy, was co-directed by his friend Jan Schmidt. During his military service, Juráček made his second film, Every Young Man (1965), linking together two fitting stories about army life. Juráček's most ambitious work, A Case for the Young Hangman (1969), was based on the third book of Gulliver's Travels. In this eerie, dark and brainy satire, Juráček captured the absurdity of life under a totalitarian régime with technical brilliance and blistering humour. Shortly after the Soviet occupation of 1968, Hangman was shelved and Juráček was never allowed to make another film because of his refusal to compromise with the government. He died of cancer in May 1989, only months before the fall of the Communist regime that had prematurely terminated his career. -mrš-