Thursday, August 16, 2007

Milos Forman (1932-)

Sierra Club

Quotation

The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.

Books

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AlibrisResearch

Films: Milos Forman
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Biographical

Jan Tomas Forman (born February 18, 1932), better known as Milos Forman, is a film director, actor and script writer.

Forman was born in Caslav, Czechoslovakia to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. He was orphaned at a very young age when his parents died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz for their membership in a Czech Resistance group. After the war, Milos attended King George College public school in the spa town Podebrady, where his fellow students were Vaclav Havel and the Masin brothers. Later on he studied film direction at the School of Cinema in Prague. He directed several Czech comedies in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1968 when the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded the country to end the Prague Spring, he was in Paris negotiating for the production of his first American film. The Czech studio that he worked for fired him, claiming that he was out of the country illegally. He moved to New York, where he later became a professor of film at Columbia University and co-chair (with Frantisek Franek) of Columbia's film division.

In spite of initial difficulties he started directing in his new home country, he achieved success in 1975 with the adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which won five Academy Awards including one for direction. In 1977, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Another notable success was Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards. His later movies haven't enjoyed as much success.

Forman's early movies are still very popular among Czechs. Many of the situations and phrases made it into common use: for example, the Czech term zhasnout (to switch lights off) from The Firemen's Ball, associated with petty theft in the movie, become synonymous for real large-scale asset stripping happening in the country during the 1990s.

In 1997 he received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Filmography[This article in part is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Milos Forman.]

Books from Alibris: Milos Forman

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