Jakubisko was one of the most famous Slovak creators and was nicknamed the “Fellini of the East”. According to his daughter’s statement, he died late on Friday evening in Prague, where he had lived since 1993.
The director, who was responsible for films such as The Thousand-Year Bee, Perinbaba, I’m Sitting on a Branch and Bathory, had serious health problems in the past. He overcame several heart attacks and underwent a heart transplant in 2012. In 2021, he was hospitalized due to kidney problems.
The Prague FAMU graduate made his debut with his first feature film, The Years of Christ, in 1967. The films Runaways and Pilgrims, Vtáčkovia, orphans and fools and See you in hell, friends, full of poetry, metaphors and symbols, with which he returned to his native eastern Slovakian landscape and to the people there , the standardizers in communist Czechoslovakia banned.
Jakubisko, who originally wanted to be an artist and cameraman, could only shoot documentaries. He returned to cinema screens only in 1979 with the film Build a House, Plant a Tree, and a year later he filmed the famous three-part television film Nevěra po slovensky.
In the 1990s, he made the films It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick and Unclear news about the end of the world, which was screened at more than 60 festivals around the world and won four Czech Lions, then the critically ill-received Post coitum (with Frank Nero) .
The adaptation of the legend of Mrs. Bathory from Čacht, which with a budget of about 350 million crowns was one of the most expensive films in the Czech Republic and in Central Europe, earned Jakubiska the Czech Lion for the best artistic achievement, the film became the most successful film of 2008 in terms of audiences.
Jakubisko has earned a number of awards in his five-decade-long career – the title of the best Slovak director of the 20th century or the Czech Lion for his long-term artistic contribution to cinematography. He also left an interesting mark in visual arts.
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