Film director Juraj Jakubisko died on February 24, 2023, aged 84. (source: Pavol Funtál)
Juraj Jakubisko, one of the greatest Slovak filmmakers affiliated with the Czechoslovak New Wave, a golden age of Czechoslovak cinema in the sixties, died on Friday at his home in Prague, Czech Republic. He was 84.
His daughter and actress, Jannette Jakubisková, announced the director’s death on social media. Jakubisko had a heart transplant in 2012, which led to the suppression of his immune system and becoming ill more often.
Jakubisko’s works are characterised by poetry, symbolism, imagination and folklore, belonging among the treasures of Slovak cinema.
Death in many forms, escaping or reconciling with it, became one of the major motifs in Jakubisko’s films, including in “Perinbaba” (The Feather Fairy), a film released in 1985. Portrayed by Italian actress Giulietta Masina, Perinbaba controls the weather on Earth by using magic from her cave. She also looks after a boy who she saved from being taken by Death. For love, he later decides to return to the world of mortals where he faces Death’s intrigues again.
“It [death] fascinates me a lot,” he said in an interview with Czech Public Radio a few years ago. “I’ve always perceived it as something mysterious, which I must keep returning to. It’s given me hope.”
The director observed that art should free people from the fear of death.
