Václav Binovec

Václav Binovec (12 September 1892 – 29 February 1976, in Prague) was a Czech film director, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He was often referred to under the pseudonyms of Willy Bronx or W. Bronx, and also V. Vabin. Binovec set up the film company Wetebfilm in 1918, and began a career as a film director, launching the careers of actors such as Suzanne Marwille, Alois Sedláček and Jan W. Speerger. Among his notable earlier films are Krasavice Káťa (1919), For the Freedom of the Nation (Za svobodu národa) and Plameny života (1920) and Sivooký démon, Černí myslivci and Poslední radost (all 1921). Subdued by the economic crisis in Czechoslovakia, Binovec commenced film production in Berlin in 1924, where he also launched a film rental business from 1926 until 1931. He was appointed the chairman of the Czechoslovak Film Union from 1933 until 1939, and held various other prominent positions in Czech film organizations. Many of his films of the 1930s were sentimental comedies or melodramas such as Pepina Rejholcová (1932), Žena, která ví, co chce (1934) and Polibek ve sněhu, and many of them were adaptions of literary works, such as František Langer's Jízdní hlídka (The Riding Patrol) (1936), the drama Poručík Alexandr Rjepkin (Lieutenant Alexander Rjepkin) (1937) and Jan Drda's novel Městečko na dlani (The Town on the Palm) (1942). During World War II, Binovec conspired with the Nazis to arrest Karel Hašler, and after the end of World War II he was imprisoned for three years and stripped of his filmmaking rights. Only in later years did he work at the Czechoslovak Film Institute, before dying in Prague in 1976. Today he is considered to be one of the pioneers of the Czech film industry.