PRAGUE (AP) – Film director Jan Nemec, a representative of the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema in the 1960s, has died. He was 79.
Czech public television, citing his wife, says Nemec died Friday. No details were given.
Nemec with other filmmakers, including Milos Forman and Vera Chytilova, made movies that were a radical departure from socialist realism, a typical communist-era genre.
His 1964 debut “Diamonds of the Night,” about two boys escaping from a transport to a Nazi death camp, was honored at a festival in Mannheim, Germany. His provocative 1966 masterpiece “Report on the Party and Guests,” targeting totalitarian power, angered the regime.
After “Oratorio for Prague,” a documentary about the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, Nemec was banned and lived in Germany and the United States from 1974 to 1989.