FM4 - Spectatorship - Jiri Trnka: Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

Jiří Trnka (24 February 1912, Plzeň - 30 December 1969, Prague) was a Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946. Most of his movies were intended for adults, and many of them were adaptations of literary works of Czech authors or foreigners. Because of his influence in animation, he was called "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe", despite the great differences between their works.

His greatest work is generally regarded to be the short Ruka ("The Hand", 1965), his last film. It is about a sculptor visited by a huge hand, which seeks the completion of a sculpture of itself. By rejecting the imposition, the artist is constantly pursued by the hand, ending with induced suicide and the hand officiating at his funeral. 'The Hand' is considered a protest against the conditions imposed by the Czechoslovak communist state to artistic creation. Although the film initially had no problems with censorship, after his death copies were confiscated and banned from public display in Czechoslovakia for two decades.

Jiří Trnka died of a heart condition in 1969 when he was just 57 years old. His funeral was a large public event.