Jan Zajíček


Jan Zajíček is a Czech film director, screenwriter and artist.

Early life

Jan Zajíček was born on 4 March 1977, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He studied fine art at the Václav Hollar School of
Art and film directing at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 1992 he began to create graffiti art, one of the earliest graffiti artists in Czechoslovakia. His experience with graffiti later influenced his strongly visual cinematic style, characterised by its combination of live-action with animation and visual effects. Between 1993 and 2000 he was a member of the Czech hip hop group WWW, which played in Prague venues including Alterna Komotovka, RC Bunkr, ROXY, and Rock Café, and in 1996 supported Sinéad O'Connor. During his studies and after graduation, he was a lecturer of experimental audio-visual production at the Josef Škvorecký Literary Academy. Since 2010, he has been a resident at the MeetFactory Contemporary Art Centre.

Career

Music videos

Zajíček has directed several award winning music videos. His first video, for the song "Známka punku" by the Czech punk band Visací zámek, was named Best Music Video of the Year by the Czech Music Academy. Other videos that received attention included "Days Will Never Be the Same", and "Meleme, meleme kávu" by Czech hip hop artists Hugo Toxxx and Vladimir 518, which received Filter magazine's award for Best Music Video of the Year, and was selected by the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for screening during its MuVi programme in 2010.

Theatre and stage design

From 2004 to 2013, Zajíček worked as a director and animator with several theatre groups, including Theatre XXL, VerTeDance, the National Theatre and the State Opera. In 2012, he created video content for the 60 metre screen at the Czech House for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom. Along with Tomáš Mašín, he was also the co-director of Czech rock band Lucie's 2014 concert tour.

Film

In 2003 Zajíček produced a short experimental student film, The End of the Individual, a study of the social structure of society on a model of one's own death. The film is a combination of 3D animation and live-action with a non-linear narrative. The film received several awards and was received positively internationally. In 2010, he created the short video montage Polys and contributed to the Czech pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China.
He has also directed several commercials and co-edited several documentaries. In 2011 he edited a documentary about the impact of corporate psychopaths upon society, and how the overuse of anti-depressants can result in erratic behavior; entitled I Am Fishead, it featured Peter Coyote, Philip Zimbardo, Václav Havel, Nicholas Christakis, Robert D. Hare and Christopher J. Lane. He was a co-creator of the Czech TV documentary series Kmeny, about urban subcultures, and in 2015 he wrote and directed the show's episode about hackers. In 2016 he wrote and co-directed a documentary about female graffiti entitled Girl Power, the first documentary on this topic. It starred Martha Cooper, Lady Pink, and others, and was screened at cinemas and festivals all around the globe.

Awards

Direction and screenwriting filmography

Music videos