Czechoslovak New Wave

Czechoslovak New Wave

Polish poster of Firemen's Ball by Miloš Forman
Years active	1960s
Country	Czechoslovakia
Major figures	Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš
Influences	Devětsil, political liberalization of Czechoslovakia leading up to the Prague Spring

The Czechoslovak New Wave (also Czech New Wave) is a term used for the 1960s films of Czech directors Miloš Forman, František Vláčil, Věra Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Pavel Juráček, Jaroslav Papoušek, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš, Vojtěch Jasný, Evald Schorm, Elmar Klos and Slovak directors Dušan Hanák, Juraj Herz, Juraj Jakubisko, Štefan Uher, Ján Kadár, Elo Havetta and others. The quality and openness of the films led the genre to be called the Czechoslovak film miracle.

The Czechoslovak New Wave was an artistic movement in cinema which evolved out of the earlier Devětsil movement of the thirties. Disgruntled with the communist regime that had taken over in Czechoslovakia in 1948, students of the Film and TV School of The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (also known as FAMU) became the dissenters of their time. Their objective in making films was "to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all."