He has twice been nominated for an Oscar for the camera in movies Ragtime (1981) and Amadeus (1984), in both cases it was a near thing. Yet no one doubts that he is one of the world’s prominent directors of photography. Since the mid- sixties, however, he stood behind the camera not only in famous films of Miloš Forman, but also of Ivan Passer, Jan Němec, Lindsay Anderson and George Roy Hill. He still believes in the power of cinematic storytelling with light and shadow, and he is attempting to inspire with his beliefs his students at the Film Academy named after Miroslav Ondříček in Písek.
