Writer / Actor

Jiří Brdečka

December 24, 1917 – June 2, 1982

Jiří Brdečka (24 December 1917 – 2 June 1982) was a Czech writer, artist, and film director. Brdečka was born in Hranice (then in Austria-Hungary) to a literary family, as his father, Otakar Brdečka (1881 – 1930), was a writer under the pseudonym Alfa. Brdečka studied philosophy and aesthetics at Charles University in Prague until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia forced the closing of the school in 1939. He then became an administrative clerk at the Prague Municipal Museum and found occasional work as a newspaper journalist and cartoonist. He worked as a press agent for the studio Lucernafilm from summer 1941 to the end of 1942. In 1943 Brdečka took a job as an animator, and by 1949 he was working as a film director and screenwriter at Barrandov Studios. He began directing animated films on his own in 1958. In addition to his film work he also worked as a journalist, a film critic and a novelist. Brdečka's work is marked by its droll intellectual humor, often featuring an extensive use of hyperbole, satire, and literary illusions.