Karel Vachek

Already as a student at FAMU, he was sent for »re-education« to a factory. This, however, did not change his demasking and for many irritating attitude to reality. Evidence of this is found in more than one sarcastic view on cheesy and hollow abuse of folklore in The Moravian Hellas (Moravské Hellas, 1963), and in particularly irreverent portrait of protagonists of the Prague Spring in the feature document Elective Affinities (Spřízněni volbou, 1968). In the period of normalization he left short film, he lived from manual work, from 1979 to 1984 he lived in exile in France and the USA. Again he began to film frantically in the nineties, and he incarnated his testimony about the absurdities of restored democracy in the vast tetralogy Little Capitalist (Malý kapitalista, 1992–2002). He leads documentary filmmaking at FAMU, where he has brought up the entire school of his followers.