Evald Schorm

Schorm began making documentaries while a student at FAMU and turned to features in 1964, repeatedly examining the conflict between individual ideals and social structures. Schorm's central characters, as in his impressive debut "Everyday Courage" (1964), his most celebrated film, "The Return of the Prodigal Son" (1966), and the Josef Skvorecky-scripted farce, "End of a Priest" (1968), are often alienated outsiders, or people cut off from their usual environs, who must face the consequences of their societal maladjustment. Not surprisingly, all three films encountered trouble with the Communist authorities. Heavy-lidded, tall and prematurely gray, Schorm acted in a number of films directed by his colleagues. The most interesting of these roles was in Nemec's surrealistic allegory, "A Report on the Party and the Guests" (1967), in which Schorm is symbolically cast as the only "guest" who takes action and leaves the notorious "party." Remaining in his country after the Soviet invasion, Schorm worked primarily as an opera director and occasionally for TV. He died of a heart attack one day before his 57th birthday.