“He was one of the most gentle and sensitive people I knew, so I cannot write more about him.”
— Václav Havel

Pavel Juráček (1935-1989) is best known as a screenwriter and dramatist. He was a key figure in the famous nouvelle vague in Czechoslovak film of the 1960s (the later famous director Miloš Forman was also part of this). During his study at the Prague Film School FAMU, he started collaborating with fellow students. He wrote scripts for their films, including the short film The Ceiling by Věra Chytilová (one of the greatest Czech film directors of the 20th century). Officially, Juráček never finished his studiy at the FAMU, but in 1962 he did start working at the Barrandov studio, the country’s largest film studio. Until 1970 he would be active there as a screenwriter, dramaturg, but above all as head of one of the creative groups, which made possible some of the most remarkable films of the Czechoslovak nouvelle vague. Juráček wrote screenplays for films by directors such as Karel Zeman, Věra Chytilová and Jiří Menzel, and turned stories by Milan Kundera and Bohumil into scenarios. He worked most closely with the director Jan Schmidt, for whose films he wrote the screenplays, including Konec srpna v hotelu Ozón (Late August in Hotel Ozon – 1966), based on a short story by Juráček, and Postava k podpírání (Joseph Kilian – 1963), also based on an idea by Juráček.
After the Prague Spring ended violently in 1968, Juráček lost his job at the Barrandov studio in the early 1970s. He was later one of the signatories of Charta 77 and was forced by the authorities to emigrate to West Germany. But even in West Germany, where he stayed for six years, he failed to work in film and returned to Czechoslovakia in the mid-1980s. He died in 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 2004, his diaries Deníky Pavla Juráčka z let 1959-1974 (The diaries of Pavel Juráček from the years 1959-1974) were published. In this more than a thousand-page work, Juráček’s incredible writing talent was revealed to the general public for the first time. The diaries were named Book of the Year 2004.
Although Juráček is rightly counted among the best filmmakers of the 1960s (retrospectives of his work regularly take place abroad), writer Miloš Fikejz made it clear as early as 2001 in his publication Pavel Juráček. Joseph Kilian that Juráček was not only an outstanding filmmaker, but above all a great writer. An artist with an exceptional sense of language and the rhythm of stories. Someone for whom writing was not a matter of social standing, but a way of life. Driven by an inner need, writing was for him an essential tool for ‘reading’ the world.
works
Deníky Pavla Juráčka z let 1959-1974 (The Diaries of Pavel Juráček)
Národní filmový archiv, Prague (2003)
Prostřednictvím kočky (By Means of the Cat)
Knihovna Václava Havla, Prague (2014)
Situace vlka (The Case of the Wolf)
Knihovna Václava Havla, Prague (2015)
Postava k podpírání / groteska 1962-1963 (Joseph Kilian)
Knihovna Václava Havla, Prague (2016)