Pavel Branko
| Pavel Branko | |
|---|---|
Branko in 1977
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| Born |
April 27, 1921 Trieste, Italy |
| Nationality | Slovak |
| Occupation | film critic |
Pavel Branko (born April 27, 1921) is a Slovak film critic, film theorist, translator of fiction and non-fiction literature, and author of articles that critique questionable use of language. He has been called "the doyen of Slovak film criticism."
After the fall of real socialism, he has received many prizes that honour the man and the work of a lifetime. In his life and work we find many traces of the impact of the history of Czechoslovakia. Branko is married to Emilia Brankova.
Pavel Branko was born on board a French ship heading to Trieste, a port city on the Adriatic Sea. His birthplace was registered as Trieste which had just reverted from Austrian rule to Italy. Branko’s father was a Slovak Jew converted to Protestantism, a clerk in Hatshava (Hačava), Hnushtya (Hnúšťa) county, Slovakia and thus a citizen of Austria-Hungary, a multi-national state, till 1918. His mother was Russian.
Branko spent his childhood in Hatshava. He moved to Bratislava in 1931. Between 1932 and 1940, he attended high school in that city. After having obtained his high school diploma in 1940, he enrolled in the Technical University of Bratislava for 1940-41. The next year he was rejected because of the Jewish roots of his father. Then he had three short-lived jobs until the summer of 1942.
The Slovak clerical-fascist regime of Jozef Tiso (which was noted for its Antisemitism) brought Branko into the resistance while he was still a high school student. In 1939, propelled by an "enthusiasm for leftist ideals," Branko joined the illegal Communist Party, the most outstanding antifascist force in Slovakia at the time.
His political activism ended abruptly in June 1942, when he was arrested, together with four other party members. Soon after his arrest, he received a life sentence.
Between 1942 and 1945, Branko was a political prisoner in Bratislava, Nitra, and Leopoldov.
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