Klíc k urcování trpaslíku podle deníku Pavla Jurácka (2002) Reviews

• A film-maker who cannot make films

  allenrogerj2006-02-18

  The film consists of extracts from Juracek's diaries read over a mixture of home movies, newsreels, archive footage and re-enactments of the scenes described. It was a tragic time personally and artistically. Part of the Czech New Wave in the 1960s, a brilliant script-writer who had just begun to be a director, Juracek was silenced when the Russians and their allies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. The only full-length film he directed, A Case for the Rookie Hangman, was released in one cinema for two weeks in 1969 and then withdrawn. Juracek was fired- the only person to be completely silenced, for it was plain that he could not return even if he was willing- from the state studios, accused, among his other crimes, of filling in forms arrogantly and offensively. At the same time, his wife left him and went to Germany with their daughter. A new relationship and a son did not ease his pains. Juracek died in 1989, only 54 years old, a few months before the regime that had destroyed him was destroyed in its turn.