User:SLOSHY3900/Ester Krumbachová

[Ester Krumbachová (12 November 1923 – 13 January 1996) was a Czech screenwriter, costume designer, stage designer, author and director. She is known for her contributions to Czech New Wave cinema in the 1960s, including collaborations with directors Věra Chytilová and Jan Němec.] '''Krumbachová would often act as both writer and art director on the films she worked on, such as Daisies and Fruit of Paradise. She directed one film in her lifetime, being The Murder of Mr. Devil, released in 1971'''. Krumbachová was largely banned from working in film during the 1980s by the communist party due to her involvement in A Report on the Party and the Guests. [In 2017, a private archive of Krumbachová's artwork, photography, documents, and clothes was made public by curators Edith Jeřábková and Zuzana Blochová. Krumbachová has since been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at TRANZITDISPLAY in Prague (2017), and the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow (2018).]

Early Life
Ester Krumbachová was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1923. In her youth, she lived through the Stalinist period of the Communist era which she avoided becoming politically involved in by working at farms and doing manual labor. Krumbachová went to school at the University of the Arts, where she studied in the arts and graphics branch. Beginning in 1954 , she worked on local theater productions in České Budějovice, where she became both a costume designer and set designer, before moving to Prague in the early 1960s.

Career
'She began working in the film industry after a commission to work on the film, The Man from the First Century (1962). '

in 1969, Krumbachová began to write The Murder of Mr.Devil with Němec; this would be the only film she would direct. Finished in 1970, Krumbachová's sole directorial work had her in the role of script writer, art designer and costume designer.

Her major script contribution was on the screenplay for Němec's A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966). Krumbachová would go on to be the script writer for Němec's following film, Martyrs of Love (1967).

'''During the 1980s, Krumbachová was banned by the communist regime. This arose due to her involvement in the film, A Report on the Party and the Guests. The film was controversial because of its depiction of authoritarian regimes, which the communist party were strongly against, leading to the film's banning and Krumbachová's blacklisting. She would occasionally find ways to work on films by working under a friend's name to avoid repercussions. This left Krumbachová to make and sell plastic jewelry and amulets for a living.  She continued her artistic output through painting and writing. Her writing during this period ended up becoming a part of her book, The First Book of Ester (1994).'''

After the communist party was dismantled due to Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, '''Krumbachová was allowed back into the film industry and returned to work on features. At this point, she continued her career by working on a variety of projects, including a music video for Ivan Král, television documentaries, and her 1994 book. The final film she worked on was as the costume designer on Marian, by Petr Václav, which released in 1996, the same year Krumbachová passed.'''

Legacy
Peter Hames describes Krumbachová as one of the three big female directors produced from the Czech New Wave, along side collaborators Věra Chytilová and Drahomíra Vihanová. Both '''Vihanová and Krumbachová had their filmmaking careers cut short due to the release of their debut features after the Russian invasion in 1968. '''

Krumbachová's impact on the Czech New Wave and Czechoslovak cinema has been described by Jan Žalman, saying, "she (Krumbachová) is the first to bring her gift of philosophical abstraction and Kafkaesque understanding of symbolism, which Max Brod called "the illumination of eternity by earthly means," to bear upon the somewhat limited world of Czech cinematic reality, making a spiritual breakthrough and bringing the new wave to the level of modern literature and drama.".