R.I.P. Vlasta Pospíšilová (1935–2022)

Vlasta Pospíšilová has died. She was 87.

Vlasta worked on Pat & Mat in two different periods. She animated the majority of the iconic first ... a je to! episode, Tapety, in 1979. More than 20 years later, she directed six episodes of the series Pat & Mat Return in 2003-04. These episodes, produced in the Anima studio, showed a certain youthful exuberance in Pat and Mat that has seldom been seen in this century. A prime example of this dynamism is Štíhlá linie, one of the best in the 28-episode bunch.

Pat and Mat are just small entries in Pospíšilová's large filmography. She was affectionately referred to as the First Lady of the Czech animated film, a befitting moniker for a legend of the scene. She started in animation back in the 1950s, working directly under Jiří Trnka on films such as The Cybernetic Grandma and the feature A Midsummer Night's Dream. She continued to work as an animator for practically every director who arrived to the main studio at Bartolomějská street, including Jan Švankmajer, whom she worked with just before the studio moved to Barrandov.

Gradually, she came to directing from the late 1970s onwards, although she continued working as an animator until the 1990s. Her most famous directorial work are the three Fimfárum films, especially the first installment, which features adaptions of Jan Werich's stories she directed in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Her career lasted 55 years and was crowned with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Anifilm festival in Třeboň in 2015. Vlasta Pospíšilová was one of the last representatives of the long line of Czech stop motion animators which started at the very beginnings and her loss will be dearly felt.

"Těch 50 let v animovaném filmu byla nádherná doba. Škoda, že to tak uteklo." – "Those fifty years in animation were a wonderful time. It's a pity that it ran away like that."

Fans of Pat and Mat send their condolences to her family and friends and the whole animation world.