“She could have asked for any role, we all know that. Yet she had the courage to enter the world of diplomacy and politics. She could have remained an actress loved by the whole nation. Her story is admirable. When you enter politics, you make more enemies on your first day than you’ve made in your entire life so far,” said host Marek Eben about Magda Vášáryová, who will receive the Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to Czech and Slovak Cinema at this year’s closing ceremony.
From her extensive filmography, Magda Vášáryová selected Birds, Orphans and Fools for the screening at the Karlovy Vary Theatre. “It is one of Juraj Jakubisko’s masterpieces. This period of his career was truly extraordinary. Like every great work of art, the film contains warnings and reminds us what to watch out for. It was made at the turn of 1968 and 1969, and its message transcends my generation. You will experience the wave of freedom that reached us – and then see the Iron Curtain descending. It fell on my generation when I was twenty years old, and it broke our spines,” she said.
Vášáryová also noted that the film struggled to find success abroad because her character dies in the same manner as Sharon Tate, who was murdered shortly before the film’s release. “Everyone assumed we had filmed it this way to exploit the tragedy. We struggled to explain that we had shot the scene before it happened.” She added that, despite considering Jakubisko a brilliant director, she often found him difficult to work with and eventually turned down his next screenplay. Soon afterwards, the political climate in Czechoslovakia prevented the director from making new films for several years.
“Because of this particular film, I was expelled from university. You have to remember that after the Soviet invasion in 1968, many people were banned from their work. Our culture and our society as a whole was robbed of countless masterpieces that could have been created,” Vášáryová said, explaining why she had chosen the film for this year’s programme.
