Years active 1961-1996 Name Ester Krumbachova | Role Screenwriter Spouse Jan Nemec (m. ?–1968) | |
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Occupation Screenwriter, Costume Designer Movies Daisies, The Party and the Guests, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Fruit of Paradise, Witchhammer Similar People Jan Nemec, Jan Klusak, Vera Chytilova, Jaroslav Kucera, Jaromil Jires | ||
RADOSTI !!! // Joy !!!
Ester Krumbachová (12 November 1923 – 13 January 1996) was a Czech screenwriter and costume designer. She is best known for her collaborations with Czech New Wave directors Věra Chytilová and Jan Němec. Němec described her as his "muse".
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Early life
Ester Krumbachová was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1923. She went to college and worked on local theater productions in České Budějovice before moving to Prague in the early 1960s. She began to work in the film industry in 1961.
Career
She worked as a costume designer on the film Diamonds of the Night (1964) with then-husband and director Jan Němec; this was her first collaboration with Němec. Her first addition to a script was on Zbyněk Brynych's Holocaust film The Fifth Horseman is Fear (1965). However, this credit is masked by her only being listed the film's costume designer. Her major script contribution was on the screenplay for Němec's A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966). The film is based on a novella by Krumbachová. Eventually, she would be banned from film making because of her involvement with A Report on the Party and the Guests.
In 1966, she worked on Daisies as a costume designer and writer; this was her first screenplay with Věra Chytilová, a long time collaborator. She would work on two more films with Chytilová, Fruit of Paradise (1970) and Faunovo velmi pozdní odpoledne (1983).
Krumbachová's next collaboration with Němec was on the film Martyrs of Love (1967) which was described as being "less political in nature" than A Report on the Party and the Guests and more "arbitrary and obscure in its details." In 1968, after the Prague Spring she worked on Fruit of Paradise, an avant garde adaptation of the Adam and Eve story, with Chytilová. in 1969, Krumbachová began to write The Murder of Mr.Devil with Němec; this would be the only film she would direct. Veteran Czech filmmaker Otakar Vávra consulted Krumbachová on his 1970 film Witchhammer. She adapted Valerie and Her Week of Wonders from the novel of the same name with Czech director Jaromil Jireš in the same year. In 1983 she worked on two films, Faunovo velmi pozdní odpoledne which was her last colabortation with Chytilová, and Strata, a New Zealand film. Krumbachová published a book První knížka Ester (The First Book of Ester) in 1994.
Legacy
Much of Krumbachová's work has been overlooked, despite her influence on the Czech New Wave.
In Jan Němec's film Late Talks with My Mother (2001), she appears as one of the people Němec talks to.
In 2005, Věra Chytilová directed the documentary In Search of Ester about Krumbachová's life and involvement in the Czech New Wave.
Personal life and death
She was briefly married to Slavicek Pisarik before marrying Czech director Jan Němec in 1963; they divorced in 1968.
She died in 1996 in Prague.
Filmography
As writer
As costume designer
As director