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Břetislav Pojar (7 October 1923 – 12 October 2012[1]) was a Czechpuppeteer,animator and director ofshort andfeature films.
Born inSušice, Czechoslovakia, Pojar started his career in the late 1940s with his work onThe Story of the Bass Cello (1949) based on the story byAnton Chekhov and directed by master Czech puppet animatorJiří Trnka. Pojar served as a puppeteer under his mentor Trnka.
Pojar compiled an extensive body of work as a director and animator in Czechoslovakia, where he made films in both puppet animation to the more commonstop motion animation. He worked with the United Nations for the two films Boom and The Big If (with Vaclav Strnad worked as a producer in the latter). Pojar's work is characterized by strong social commentary, such as inBalablok, where armies of small circle- and square-shaped beings war with each other until they are all wounded into indistinguishable shapes. Often, Pojar's shorts contain little or no spoken dialogue.
In the mid-1960s, Pojar emigrated toCanada, where he began a long collaboration with theNational Film Board. His Canadian work is some of his best known, and it has won awards at prestigious international film festivals. His filmTo See or Not to See (Psychocratie) won theCanadian Film Award forFilm of the Year in 1970.[2]
In the mid-2000s, Pojar moved back to the Czech film business in order to co-direct the collaborative animated feature filmFimfárum 2 (based on the stories ofJan Werich), which was released in 2006.
Pojar died inPrague at the age of 89 in 2012.
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