An exceptional artist who has experienced the harshest communist repression: His journey to the top … He died suddenly | Telkáč.sk – Telkáč.sk

Jiří Křižan was born on October 26, 1941 in Valašské Meziříčí. The family was hit hard by the atmosphere of the Stalinist 1950s. Křižan’s father was confiscated and in 1951 he was detained while trying to leave the republic. He was convicted in a fabricated trial and executed for the crime of high treason.

Nevertheless, Křižan managed to get to the grammar school, from where he was expelled in 1957. The reason was a ridiculous poem, which he wrote after the death of the workers’ president Antonín Zápotocký. He worked in the Ostrava mines and in other working professions, and in the evenings he began to write screenplays.

The first successes up to the Crystal Globe from Karlovy Vary

His first success was the screenplay for the film Hot Air, which was shot in 1965 by Václav Gajer. Thanks to the looser political situation, Křižan was accepted for a distance study of screenwriting and dramaturgy at the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU). He worked as an editor for the daily Mladá fronta. Since 1972 he has been the screenwriter and dramaturg of the Barrandov Film Studio.

Together with the director Zdeněk Sirový, he made three short films from the life of gold diggers in the early 1970s based on a literary masterpiece by Jack London – in the first of them, the Slovak actor Ivan Palúch played the only gold canyon.

Another Slovak actor, Juraj Kukura, played the main character in the film Shadows of a Hot Summer, which was shot by František Vláčil (1977) according to Křižan’s screenplay. The film won the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Křižan created exceptional deeds with the Slovak director Holly

The creators of the film Signum laudis received a special jury prize at the same festival two years later. The drama set at the end of the First World War was shot by Slovak director Martin Hollý based on a screenplay by Jiří Křižan. For this work, Křižan was also nominated for the Klement Gottwald State Prize. However, the artist refused to accept the award named after the president, who signed the death sentence of his father. Due to this attitude, he had to leave Barrandov and implemented his projects in studios in Zlín or Bratislava. In 1983, Martin Hollý shot the film Dead Teaches the Living again, a year later, in collaboration with director Jaromil Jireš, the film Extended Time was created with Miloš Kopecký in the lead role.

As a director, Hollý also signed another important work by Jiří Křižan – the autobiographical story Silent Pain. The tragic fates of people who became victims of persecution in the 1950s are intertwined with tragicomic experiences of military service. However, the 1990 film disappeared a bit in political life after November ´89.

He was also involved in politics, after the gentle revolution he was one of Havel’s advisers

Finally, Křižan himself, who has been civically involved since the end of the 1980s, also took part in it. He advocated the release of Václav Havel from prison, co-organized the Petition of Several Sentences and worked in the top leadership of the Civic Forum movement. After the Gentle Revolution, when Václav Havel became president, Křižan was one of his advisers. In 1992-1995 he was Deputy Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic. He also lectured on screenwriting at FAMU.

After returning to screenwriting, Křižan made a film, which is the culmination of his work: the war drama Sekal must be killed. Jiří Křižan won the Czech Lion for the screenplay for the film, which was shot in 1998 by Vladimír Michálek. His last work was the Slovak film Peace in the Soul (Vladimír Balko, 2009).

Since 1998, Jiří Křižan has lived in the village of Branky near Valašské Meziříčí, where he grew up and took care of his economy. He died suddenly – of a heart attack – on October 13, 2010, shortly before his 69th birthday.

Source: TASR

Photo: TASR / Miroslav Košírer

Tags: Jiří Křižan