Amadeus, Cuckoo’s Nest and So Much More - Miloš Forman Day School
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This day school explores Forman’s theatrical releases and places them in the context of his tumultuous biography and varied career as well as key developments in Czechoslovak cinema and in the New Hollywood.
There are very few people who have won the Best Director Oscar twice, and had two massive global hits with the very same films. Miloš Forman achieved this rare feat with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984).
Born in 1932 in Czechoslovakia, Forman befriended the future playwright and Czech(oslovak) president Václav Havel in secondary school, and was taught at film school by leading Czech writer Milan Kundera. In addition to work for the theatre and television, Forman co-wrote and directed the comedies Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen’s Ball (1967), which are ranked among the very best Czech movies of all time, making him a figurehead of the ‘Czechoslovak New Wave’.
In 1968, the year in which Warsaw Pact troops quashed the so-called Prague Spring, Forman left Czechoslovakia for Paris and the United States. He then directed (but only in three cases co-wrote) nine films for theatrical release, most of them adaptations of novels or stage plays/musicals, made both in the US and, from the 1980s onwards, in Europe.
His films deal with the American counterculture (the intergenerational comedy Taking Off [1971] and the musical Hair [1979]) as well as some of its precursors (Cuckoo’s Nest) and its resonances across later decades: The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) is a comedy-drama about a pornographer and free-speech campaigner of the 1970s and 1980s, and Man on the Moon (1999) is an anti-biopic about the 1970s anti-comedian Andy Kaufman. Forman dealt with early 20th century America in Ragtime (1981) and with the decades before and after the French Revolution in Austria, France and Spain in Amadeus, Valmont (1989) and Goya’s Ghosts (2006).
About the tutor:
Peter Krämer is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Media, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is a regular guest lecturer at several other universities in the UK, Germany and Czechia, has written or edited twelve academic books and has also co-authored an illustrated volume about American film for children. He has been involved in adult education for over thirty-five years.
Programmed in partnership with the Sir John Hurt Film Trust.
There are very few people who have won the Best Director Oscar twice, and had two massive global hits with the very same films. Miloš Forman achieved this rare feat with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984).
Born in 1932 in Czechoslovakia, Forman befriended the future playwright and Czech(oslovak) president Václav Havel in secondary school, and was taught at film school by leading Czech writer Milan Kundera. In addition to work for the theatre and television, Forman co-wrote and directed the comedies Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen’s Ball (1967), which are ranked among the very best Czech movies of all time, making him a figurehead of the ‘Czechoslovak New Wave’.
In 1968, the year in which Warsaw Pact troops quashed the so-called Prague Spring, Forman left Czechoslovakia for Paris and the United States. He then directed (but only in three cases co-wrote) nine films for theatrical release, most of them adaptations of novels or stage plays/musicals, made both in the US and, from the 1980s onwards, in Europe.
His films deal with the American counterculture (the intergenerational comedy Taking Off [1971] and the musical Hair [1979]) as well as some of its precursors (Cuckoo’s Nest) and its resonances across later decades: The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) is a comedy-drama about a pornographer and free-speech campaigner of the 1970s and 1980s, and Man on the Moon (1999) is an anti-biopic about the 1970s anti-comedian Andy Kaufman. Forman dealt with early 20th century America in Ragtime (1981) and with the decades before and after the French Revolution in Austria, France and Spain in Amadeus, Valmont (1989) and Goya’s Ghosts (2006).
About the tutor:
Peter Krämer is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Media, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is a regular guest lecturer at several other universities in the UK, Germany and Czechia, has written or edited twelve academic books and has also co-authored an illustrated volume about American film for children. He has been involved in adult education for over thirty-five years.
Programmed in partnership with the Sir John Hurt Film Trust.
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Where is it happening?
Cinema City, St Andrews St, NR24AD Norwich, United Kingdom, 10 St Andrews Hill, Norwich, NR2 4, United Kingdom
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherCinema City Norwich
