Filmmaker Vojtech Jasny of 1960s new wave of Czechoslovak cinema dies at age 93

Vojtech Jasny, a filmmaker who belonged to the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema in the 1960s, has died. He was 93.

Vojtech Jasny (Michal Dolezal/CTK via AP)

PRAGUE (AP): Vojtech Jasny, a filmmaker who belonged to the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema in the 1960s, has died. He was 93.

Slovacke Divadlo, a theatre he frequently visited, said that Jasny died Friday. A family representative confirmed his death to news agencies.

From the 1950s, Jasny made some 50 movies in Czechoslovakia and later in the West when he emigrated after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

His most famous film, All My Good Countrymen, from 1968, about the brutal changes in the country under communism, was banned in his homeland. It won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969.

He also won a Cannes special jury prize for his 1963 film, The Cassandra Cat.

In the 1980s, Jasny settled in the United States, lecturing at Columbia University. He later returned home.

Jasny’s Hell on Earth, featuring testimonies of Holocaust survivors, was part of 2002’s Broken Silence, a five-film documentary project commissioned by Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.