To capture the nature of the Czech man
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Hynek Bočan was born on 29 April 1938 in Prague. The family lived in Libeň. In 1953, Jiří Sequens cast him as a child actor in his film Lead Bread (Olověný chléb). This experience led him into the world of film. Between 1956 and 1961 he studied directing at FAMU (Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) under the guidance of Professor Miroslav Hubáček. Already at school, he entered the community of the Czechoslovak New Wave, his classmates were Evald Schorm, Pavel Juráček, Věra Chytilová and others. After a very intensive and high-quality study, he graduated with the short story film The Dynamite Watchman (Hlídač dynamitu). His first films were made in the film studios at Barrandov in a relatively free environment in the atmosphere of the sixties. He made the films Nobody Will Laugh (Nikdo se nebude smát, 1965), Private Whirlwind (Soukromá vichřice, 1967), Honour and Glory (Čest a sláva, 1968). The film The Borstal (Pasťák) made at the turn of 1969-70, could no longer be released and became “a vault film” completed only in 1989. The creative hiatus lasted for almost five years, when Hynek Bočan made a living sewing dolls and later in dubbing. It wasn’t until 1975 that he made the crime comedy The Man from London (Muž z Londýna, 1974) and returned to Barrandov, where he worked on films that were contemporary but apolitical. However, he never joined the Communist Party. After the Velvet Revolution, he made the television series The Wild Country (Zdivočelá země), where, together with the screenwriter Jiří Stránský, he mapped the Czechoslovak history of the second half of the 20th century through a fictional story.
