Karel Zeman

Karel Zeman (3 November 1910 – 5 April 1989) was a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator, best known for directing fantasy films combining live-action footage with animation.

A bust of Karel Zeman.

Quotes

• For an artist there is no more serious and, at the same time, more joyous task than to create, through art, a new aesthetic, and ultimately, a new way of being.
  • Quoted in Pauline Sameshima, Seeing Red: A Pedagogy of Parallax: an Epistolary Bildungsroman on Artful Scholarly Inquiry (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2007), pp. 156–157, accessed 26 August 2013

• I'm on a journey to discover the beauty of the fairy tale and I want to stay on that path, trying to find better ways to capture it on film. And I have only one wish — to delight the eyes and heart of every child.
  • Jsem na cestě objevování krásy pohádek, a tak na ní chci zůstat a hledat stále dokonalejší způsob jejich filmového vyprávění. Mám jedinou touhu — potěšit dětské oči a dětská srdce.
    • Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English and Czech).

• I wanted one thing – to show the fantastic world created by nature over millions of years. Film offered me that chance.
  • Šlo mi o jedno — ukázat fantastický svět, který vytvořila příroda před mnoha miliony let. A film mi tuto možnost nabízel.
    • Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English and Czech).

• Man has created a grandiose world of technology, of which dread and fear are often the result... Fortunately, events in the world and our way of life are not determined by technology alone.
  • Člověk si vytvořil grandiózní svět techniky, z kterého jde často hrůza a strach... Naštěstí to není jen technika, která určuje dění světa a způsob života.
    • Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English and Czech).

• With the vast sweep of his imagination Jules Verne created a whole world of magical things imbued with a delightful naiveté, which just charm us...
  • Veliká fantazie Julesa Vernea vytvořila svět, kouzelný svět plný rozkošné naivity, která je tolik půvabná...
    • Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English and Czech).

• Why do I make movies? I'm looking for terra incognita, a land on which no filmmaker has yet set foot, a planet where no director has planted his flag of conquest, a world that exists only in fairy tales.
  • Proč vůbec točím filmy? Hledám Zemi nikoho, ostrov, na který ještě nevstoupila noha filmařova, planetu, na které ještě žádný režisér nevztyčil vlajku objevitele, svět, který existuje jen v pohádkách.
    • Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English and Czech).