As per our current Database, Ivan Passer has been died on 9 January, 2020 at Reno, Nevada, USA.
When Ivan Passer die, Ivan Passer was 87 years old.
| Popular As | Ivan Passer |
| Occupation | Director |
| Age | 87 years old |
| Zodiac Sign | Cancer |
| Born | July 10, 1933 (Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]) |
| Birthday | July 10 |
| Town/City | Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] |
| Nationality | Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] |
Ivan Passer’s zodiac sign is Cancer. According to astrologers, the sign of Cancer belongs to the element of Water, just like Scorpio and Pisces. Guided by emotion and their heart, they could have a hard time blending into the world around them. Being ruled by the Moon, phases of the lunar cycle deepen their internal mysteries and create fleeting emotional patterns that are beyond their control. As children, they don't have enough coping and defensive mechanisms for the outer world, and have to be approached with care and understanding, for that is what they give in return.
Ivan Passer was born in the Year of the Rooster. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Rooster are practical, resourceful, observant, analytical, straightforward, trusting, honest, perfectionists, neat and conservative. Compatible with Ox or Snake.
Ivan Passer was one of the key authors of the "new wave" of Czech cinema, a group of young people who forged an energetic and transgressive film movement in the 1960s, breaking away from the precepts of hard socialist realism.
Passer was not only the author of the scenarios of his own films, but he also worked on the scripts of the first four motion pictures made by his countryman, friend and colleague Milos Forman: "Konkurs" (1963), "Black Petr" ( 1964), "Loves of a Blonde" (1965) and "The Firemen's Ball" (1967).
The grandson of a silent movie screenwriter and son of a Jewish couple persecuted by the Nazis, Ivan was a rebel boy, sent to a boarding school where he became friends with Milos. Together they went to study cinema at the FAMU film school in Prague, but young Ivan was eventually expelled from the academy.
By then he had acquired skills in movie-making, some experience and had key friends, such as cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. With Forman and other friends, they made their first movies.In 1965 Passer made a remarkable first feature, the beautiful "Intimate Lighting", a film of impressionist inspiration that immediately established his name as a promising new director.
But the social pressures and political unrest in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in 1968 with the Soviet invasion, led him into exile the following year. However, in the United States he did not achieve the notoriety of Forman, who received the best proposals, while he rejected offers that did not convince him: for example, he refused to make "Yentl" for a number of reasons, including his conviction that Barbra Streisand was too old and famous for the role, in opposition to other key performers as Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving.
Likewise, he refused to make films with elements of violence, which he always opposed. During World War II he had been directly exposed to violence, and he believed that it was dangerous to represent it in films: violence, he said, affects "some people who are not able to realize the difference between reality and fantasy.
"However, he made some worthy movies, such as his American debut "Born to Win" (1971), a complex portrait of a heroin-addict hairdresser; his satire on civil surveillance, "Law and Disorder" (1974); the comedy about money-laundering bankers "Silver Bears" (1977), and the cult film "Cutter's Way" (1981), in which a war veteran investigates a crime, despite he only has one eye, one arm and one leg.
For television he directed the biopic "Stalin" in 1992.Passer taught film at the University of Southern California, and lectured students in foreign film academies. He died in Reno, Nevada, on January 9th, 2020.
