Karel Kachyna, 79; Czech’s Movies Challenged the Communist Regime
Karel Kachyna, 79, a noted Czech filmmaker who took on subjects that were taboo under communism, died Friday in a hospital near Prague, his family said.
Most of Kachyna’s best-known work, such as “Chariot to Vienna,” was done during the 1960s, when he was part of a Czech wave of liberal filmmakers including Milos Forman and Jiri Menzel.
His political satire “Ucho” (“The Ear”), about the Czechoslovak secret police, was later banned by the authorities, then re-released after the end of the communist regime in 1989.
He also depicted the controversial 1945 expulsion of ethnic Germans from postwar Czechoslovakia in his movie “Long Live the Republic,” and the life of Jews in Ukraine in “Hanele.”
Kachyna was born in Vyskov in 1924 and was educated at the Film Academy in Prague.
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