Vera Chytilová (Czech Republic, 1929-2014) was an avant-garde Czech film director and one of the pioneers of the so-called New Wave of Czech cinema. She studied philosophy and architecture before entering the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where she was the only woman in her class. From the beginning of her career, her work was characterised by provocation and criticism of the formal clichés of cinema as an institution, as well as strong personal ethical values. Women and their position in society are among the central themes of her work. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the USSR in 1968, Chytilová's irreverent and transgressive cinema was no longer accepted by the communist government and her work was banned until 1975. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, she joined the FAMU in Prague as a lecturer and, from 2005, headed the directing department. She died in Prague on 12 March 2014 at the age of 85.
