Dušan Hanák is a Slovak film director.

Hanák graduated from the FAMU

Film and TV School of The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague or FAMU is one of the oldest film schools in Europe. Located in Prague, Czech Republic, FAMU was founded in 1946 as one of three branches of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague...

 (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 in 1965. He began with a series of shorts at the Koliba film studios

Koliba

Koliba is the name of a locality in Bratislava, Slovakia, which is situated on the foothills of the Little Carpathians. It administratively belongs to the Nové Mesto borough and is part of the Bratislava Forest Park....

  in Bratislava

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

. Several of them received awards, and so did his first feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

 322 (the code for cancer in medical records of diseases, 1969).

Hanák followed it with the still admired feature-length documentary Pictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta, 1972), partly a meditation on what lies hidden beneath the concept of "an authentic life", a theme already addressed in 322. Although Hanák was treated with suspicion by the more repressive communist authorities that took over after the Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

 invasion of Czechoslovakia

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

, he found an early refuge in a topic sufficiently removed from big politics to survive on the margins of official production and yet, executed with a finesse that gave it a wide international appeal. In the most extraordinary section, an old man talks with great fascination and lucidity about space travel, recalling how two astronauts walked on the moon and collected rocks while a third circled in their spaceship. Tacked to the wall of his crumbling shack is a small photograph of men walking on the moon. It is a beautiful, elegiac work whose images could apply to Appalachia

Appalachia

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

 or any other poor region.
Good reviews or not, Pictures of the Old World was ordered shelved after the briefest of theatrical runs. Nevertheless, despite the authorities' surly take on Hanák's films, his next venture, Rosy Dreams, turned out to be another original work. His film I Love, You Love

I Love, You Love

I Love, You Love is a 1989 Czech drama film directed by Dušan Hanák. It was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival where Hanák won the Silver Bear for Best Director.-Cast:* Roman Klosowski as Vinco* Iva Janzurová as Viera...

won the Silver Bear for Best Director

Silver Bear for Best Director

The Silver Bear for Best Director is the Berlin International Film Festival's award for best achievement in direction.-Awards:-Repeated winners:*Mario Monicelli *Satyajit Ray *Carlos Saura -External links:*...

 at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival

39th Berlin International Film Festival

The 39th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 10 to 21, 1989.-Jury:* Rolf Liebermann * Leslie Caron* Chen Kaige* Vadim Glowna* Randa Haines* Vladimir Ignatovski* Adrian Kutter* Francisco Rabal...

.

Filmography

• Paper Heads (Director, Story, Script) (1995)
• Private Lives (Director, Story, Script) (1990)
• Silent Joy (Director, Story, Script) (1985)
• I Love, You Love
  I Love, You Love
  I Love, You Love is a 1989 Czech drama film directed by Dušan Hanák. It was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival where Hanák won the Silver Bear for Best Director.-Cast:* Roman Klosowski as Vinco* Iva Janzurová as Viera...
  
    (Director, Story, Script) (1980)
• Rosy Dreams
  Rosy Dreams
  Rosy Dreams is a 1977 Czechoslovak film. Despite its whimsical poetic style, it was the first Central European feature film that put the Romani community at the center stage in a realistic manner...
  
    (Director, Story, Script) (1976)
• Pictures of the Old World (Director, Story, Script) (1972)
• 322 (film)  (Director, Story, Script) (1969)

External links

• Slovak Movie Database
• Dušan Hanák (director) 322, 1969. (Clip.)