Evald Schorm

He was born in Prague. He took up studies at a trade school in Tábor. They expelled him for being “a son of a kulak”, and his family was displaced. He worked as a tractor driver. He was allowed to take his graduation exam and afterwards he earned his living as a builder. He went through military service and then took up a singing job in the Army Art Company of Vít Nejedlý. He graduated in film directing at FAMU, under professor Otakar Vávra. He worked as assistant director to Zden?k Podskalský The Girl from the Moon. For the Studio of Documentary Film he directed newsreels and documentary essays and also a short feature film. He also worked at Czech television.His debut feature film was Courage for Every Day. Return of the Prodigal Son, on which Sergej Machonin also co-wrote. Courage for Every Day was not released because of communist censorship. Undaunted, Schorm directed House of Joy, a short film which would become a segment in the anthology feature Pearls of the Deep, based on prose works of author Bohumil Hrabal’s.As he was allowed to make films, Schorm continued cooperating with notable writers of the sixties. The coup-de-grace of Schorm’s movie production in the sixties was the capricious, magical Dogs and Men, which he took over from another director, Vojt?ch Jasný. He was forbidden to work in the film industry for political reasons. He was also barred from television. He had also involved himself in the theater, directing. He began cooperating with the multi-media theater Laterna Magika. His first dramatic effort was Crime and Punishmen, followed by An Eternal Husband. He reached the artistic peak of this exploration directing his own adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov. He died in 1988.