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Biography
Jiří Brdečka (December 24, 1917 – June 2, 1982) was a Czech writer, artist, and film director.
Brdečka was born in Hranice (then in Austria-Hungary) to a literary family; his father, Otakar Brdečka, wrote under the pseudonym Alfa. Brdečka studied at Charles University in Prague until the German occupation of Czechoslovakia forced the closing of the school in 1939. He then became an administrative clerk at the Prague Municipal Museum (Městském muzeu v Praze) and found occasional work as a newspaper journalist and cartoonist. He worked as a press agent for the studio Lucernafilm from summer 1941 to the end of 1942. In 1943 Brdečka took a job as an animator, and by 1949 he was working as a film director and screenwriter at Barrandov Studios. He began directing animated films on his own in 1958.
His writing credits include Springman and the SS, The Emperor's Nightingale, The Emperor and the Golem, Lost Children, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, The Cassandra Cat, Lemonade Joe, Dinner for Adele, and The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians. Brdečka's work is marked by its droll intellectual humor, often featuring an extensive use of hyperbole, satire, and literary illusions.
In 1952, Brdečka's daughter, the writer and film critic Tereza Brdečková, was born.
Brdečka died in 1982 in Prague.