Hanuš Polak

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hanuš Polak (born January 8, 1925 in Prague , Czechoslovakia , † August 5, 2016 in Vienna ) was a Czech-Austrian cameraman for film and television.

Live and act

Hanuš Polak was the son of a Prague cloth merchant who wanted his son to become a doctor. Then he set up a medical laboratory for the 16-year-old Hanuš, in which the junior grew tuberculosis bacilli and performed heart operations on frogs. However, Hanuš soon developed much more interest in his father's second passion: his enthusiasm for film. Polak senior had his own photo laboratory and film cameras. Shortly after the end of the Second World War , the enthusiastic motorcyclist Hanuš Polak began taking photos for motorcycle races for specialist magazines and finally switched to the Czech newsreel, for which he produced individual, short films. Hanuš Polak was a founding member of the establishment of a Czechoslovak state television in the mid-1950s. In addition, he trained professionally in the camera sector at the Prague State Film Academy FAMU .

Until 1968, he worked as a cameraman for Czechoslovak television and shot numerous documentaries, television series and feature films with games, for which he received several awards. During the crackdown on the Prague Spring in August 1968, Polak secretly produced images that he sent to foreign media. As a result, he quickly came into the focus of the new, Stalinist-Communist masters, so that he immediately had to flee to Austria via the then not yet closed border. After a short stopover in San Francisco, Polak finally settled in Vienna in 1969.

In the period that followed, Polak was behind the camera in a considerable number of very different productions: documentaries and feature films, TV series and cinema productions, experimental and conventional entertainment films. This resulted in collaborations with filmmakers as diverse as Heide Pils , Hannes Rossacher , Kitty Kino , Niki List , Peter Sämann and again and again Walter Bannert . Hanuš Polak photographed the film Beethoven in Vienna in 1985 for the American Paul Morrissey . Polak was soon signed on by German television and made a name for himself there with series in which the Bavarian local heroes Ottfried Fischer ( Der Bulle von Tölz ) and Wolfgang Fierek ( A Bavarian on Rügen ) played the leading roles. His last major work at the beginning of the new millennium was the ARD / ORF series Julia - An Unusual Woman with Austria's TV star Christiane Hörbiger in the main or title role.

In 1976 Hanuš Polak also played a decisive role in founding the Association of Austrian Cinematographers (AAC). In 2012 the Austrian by choice received honorary membership of the AAC for his achievements there. Polak's son of the same name (* 1959) plays smaller roles in Austrian television productions and also works as an assistant director.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Polak, Hanuš
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Polak, Hanus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Czech cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 2016
Place of death Vienna