I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind
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Jiřina Pěčová was born on 16 August 1940 in Prague. The family lived with her mother’s parents in Vršovice, on the premises of the Eden amusement park. Her grandfather owned a dance hall and a haunted castle there, which they adapted for living purposes when the attractions began shutting down. Jiřina did not have a close relationship with her father, Josef Loukota; her mother, Václava, née Horáková, divorced him when she was five years old. The witness did not receive a recommendation for further studies after graduation, stating that her grandfather was a capitalist. She joined the Bratři v triku studio at Barrandov as a contourist. Later, she took a projectionist course and studied editing at the FAMU evening film school. She worked as an assistant editor and from 1980 as an editor. She contributed to a wide range of cartoons for which Czechoslovakia became famous even abroad. This also provided a supply of currency for the socialist state apparatus and therefore, less pressure during the normalisation period. Jiřina Pěčová never joined the Communist Party and did not sign an agreement with the entry of the occupying troops in August 1968. For her, working in the field of animated film was a lifelong pursuit, and she passed on her knowledge to students of FAMU and later UMPRUM in Prague. In 2022, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to animated film. At the time of filming (2023), she lived in Prague.
