Ivan Balaďa

Already in 1960 he made his first, TV treatment of Mňačko’s novel Because We Don’t Forget. He spent the next years with the Czechoslovakian Army Film, where he directed unconventional documentaries (for example, the parable on totality Metrum, 1967). At the same time he was making films for the Bratislava TV (The Lady, 1967), in feature films for the movie theaters his dynamic visual style did not get the opportunity until the Barrandov apocalyptic vision The Ark of Fools. This work was blacklisted in 1970 and presented again twenty years later. In a compulsory selfincrimination, its creator turned to the theatre, and he was allowed to make his second, and for the present, last film, Water of life, as late as in 1987. His lifelong existence on the sideline confirmed even his still underappreciated series The Grandest of Pierots (1990).