Jan Němec: To Birgit: Regarding Internet again, I think that Internet is one of the major invention of the present time and I gave last November my last feature film Late Night Talk with Mother to the Internet as a first Czech film to be introduced to the Internet.

Martin: What do you think of the current state of politics in the Czech Republic?

Jan Němec: I have a mixed feelings, we have a great president Václav Havel and the stupid Prime Minister Zeman and extremely ambitious and stupid speaker of the House Václav Klause.

These political leaders are mixing the kommunists style socialism with the gangster style kapitalism. All the government is enjoying to be and stay in power. I think that is not extremely bad but surely is very far from being very good. I think that our new democracy needs minimally ten more years.

Martin: And modern Czech cinema - I'm thinking of "Pelisky " & "Musime pomahat" ?

Jan Němec: These two films are not so much modern. They following the path started with film Kolja as lot of people nicknaming Coca-Cola Kolja. Very nice, very sweet, very lovely indeed. But in the sixties and the communists rule films like Firemans Ball, Daisies or my film Report of the Party and Guests were definitively not so nice and sweet.

Martin: I would agree - we've recently had a series of Forman's Films in London - including "Fireman's Ball" and "Loves of Blond" and they seemed to have a lot more to say socially and politically - why do you think that is?

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Jan Němec: We were creators not the painters and polishers to pink colour.

Martina: Mr. Němec, when I saw your film The Party and the Guests a long time ago in the Czech Republic, I was a little girl and did not understand it very much although I have always remembered it. Is it available on video so I can see it again? Would I get it in Prague if I asked my parents to get it for me?

Jan Němec: In the Czech Republic this film is not available on video, I do not know why. But you can get video with English subtitles from Facets Multimedia Chicago, USA - they are on Internet as the professional distribution company.

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Angela: Can you tell us how you organised filming in August 1968? And a very concrete question: who really owns copyright to that invasion footage?

Jan Němec: On the 21 August 68 I was as many of the Czech citizens in the front of the Radio building, just with me on the street where people from studio Kratky film were I was working on US independent production documentary on Prague Spring. I asked people from Kratky film for a 35mm camera and with sound man Mr. Vizier as he can operate 35mm camera. He did it and we were shooting scenes of Russian tanks and fighting on the streets. This 18 minutes negative footage I personally smuggled the same day to Austrian TV in Vienna. This was a first footage broadcast all over the world. I gave the footage to the Austrian TV free without any payment at all. Later I used this footage to my documentary Oratorio for Prague for which I have a copyright. I know that the British Company Visnius has a double negative of this footage and it selling it for the profit. I know also that the same footage was the same day in the hands of the KGB agents of the Austrian TV and was used for the propaganda anti Czech films. Also American Oscar winning documentary short Czechoslovakia 1918-1968 is using the same footage. At the time of invasion I was telling my cinematographer what it will be every shot. This man Mr. Vizner a few years later died in Italy. This is answer to your question.

Jan Němec: I do not see many new feature Czech films dealing with this problem.

Martina: When you arrived in the States, could you speak any English?

Jan Němec: I suppose that I can, I was teaching in the Yale and Berkeley but I do not typing this text.!!!

Martina has left the building.

Martin: Are you optimistic about the future of Czech cinema, in terms of both quantity and quality?

Jan Němec: I am very optimistic. I am teacher of the FAMU film academy in Prague and very young people who are coming in and starting firm are very sensitive and very talented. We do have a guman potential but we would need a little help from Czech laws and government at this time is not a penny coming from Czech budget to film production. I hope that all political parties will be finally forced maybe with our membership in the European Union to help us financially. But also a new technology I shot my last film on DV can help a lot.

Martin: so you agree that Cz should join the EU ? Do all Czechs think the same?

Jan Němec: In the last pool it was 38 percent said definite yes. Our state bureaucrats and "Eurosceptics" and this is one major misinformation giving to Czech people like The Czechs are the best who cares about the Europe. Minimal half of the nation is not properly informed that it is for the Czech Republic absolutely necessary to be part of this Europe.

Jan Němec: One last question?

Martin: Is film dead and DV the new frontier?

Jan Němec: Film is not dead. DV is alive and now the question is what was the first, chicken or the egg?

Martin: Many thanks, Jan.

Regularly in his career, Němec made biographical documentaries. Toyen (2005), was a characteristically fragmented but still resonantly imaginative portrait of the lesser internationally known Czech Surrealist painter Marie Čermínová (1902-80). Like in his recent personal films, here Němec frequently combines images (from her paintings in this case) with dramatizations of events in her life. From 2006, Němec taught regularly at FAMU while continuing to make films. The docudrama The Ferrari Dino Girl (Holka Ferrari Dino, 2009) once again looks back to historical and personal events by reconstructing the circumstances of his filming the Soviet invasion and smuggling the footage to Austria with the help of a girl named Jana. Both films were given a warmer reception than much of his post-1989 output, but unfortunately their distribution remained extremely limited. His final completed film, Heart Beat 3D (2010), resurrected his 1969 screenplay with Havel for a second time and was the first stereoscopic Czech film, continuing his innovation to the very end. When Němec died in March he was far into production on The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street. Ever the cultural maverick and institutional fugitive, one of his final public acts was to return his Medal of Merit, bestowed upon him in 2002, his protest at the choice of 2014 recipients. According to his friend, the celebrated Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky, Jan Němec is the foremost enfant terrible of the Czech New Wave. The depiction of reality and every day human relationships were common features of this epoch of Czech cinematography, as presented by its most famous directors Milos Forman and Jiří Menzel but this was exactly the opposite of Němec's personal style of film making and his non-realist films. During his career Němec was creating parables of the mechanism of power which documented how people are affected by manipulation and oppression. All his films are exceptional and very innovative. Jan Němec proved over and over that he was a film experimenter and, both in his private and professional life, bohemian and exhibitionist. For those of us lucky enough to have met or worked with him, he was very inspiring and, not least, very great fun to be around.

Steven Yates