petr zelenka - profile

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Screenwriter and director Petr Zelenka (21 August 1967, Prague, Czech Republic)

Petr Zelenka is the son of two screenwriters, Otto Zelenka and Bohumila Zelenková. From 1986 – 1991 he studied dramaturgy and screenwriting at FAMU. Here he wrote the script for the short Woody-Allen-esque film Everything You Want To Know About Sex And Are Afraid To Experience (1988). Later he wrote another short film for television, You Do Nothing Because You've Got No Good Reason (1991). Both these films were directed by his schoolmate Jan Hřebejk. From 1990 – 1996 four screenplays of his were produced by Czech Television (The Witness /1991/; Two of Us /1992/ directed by Zdeněk Zelenka; Television /1993/; and A Kennel of Honor /1996/ directed by Dušan Klein). Then, Petr started to direct his movies himself. In 1996 he created the documentary-styled mystification Mnága – Happy End (1996) about a band called Mňága a Žďorp. In this film he humorously depicts the artificial creation of a band which actually cannot play. Previous to this he had approached the topic of the connection between the music and movie worlds in the TV documentary Visací zámek 1982 – 2007 (1993) about a band called Visací zámek. Similarly, in a very playful and hyperbolic way, he later made Year of the Devil (2002), a feature film about a bizarre tour of real-life musicians Jaromír Nohavica, Karel Plíhal and the band Čechomor. This movie won the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and six Czech Lion Awards.

Zelenka’s feature-film début, the tragicomedy Buttoners was awarded with four Czech Lions and a Tiger Awaard at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam. He wrote a screenplay for the comedy Loners (directed by David Ondříček) about the lives of lonely people in their thirties. This movie became the biggest blockbuster of the year and gave actor Ivan Trojan his first screen role. In the same year German production company Ziegler Films commissioned Petr to write and direct a custom short, Powers, for their successful television anthology series, Erotic Tales. In this comedy, Trojan portrays a magician in a cabaret who one day realizes that he does, in fact, have supernatural abilities. In 2001 Zelenka was commissioned by the Dejvické Theater in Prague to write a play. He came up with Tales of Ordinary Madness for which he received the Alfred Radok Award for Best Original Play of the Year. Four years later he made a movie based on this play, Wrong Side Up. A comedy about relationships and absurdities of everyday life, it received two Czech Lions. His latest project is the more dramatic Karamazovs (2008) where he once again works with actors from the Dejvicke Theater. Set against the background of a theater rehearsal taking place in the unconventional location of a Polish steel mill, story lines of the company members, its director and also one of the viewers begin intermingling with the performance itself.

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