Editors’ note: As editors of this volume, we wanted to ensure that at least one essay represented experimental filmmaking in every Warsaw Pact country outside the U.S.S.R., yet we found our efforts repeatedly thwarted by reasons beyond our control when it came to contributions about former Czechoslovakia. Therefore, we were extremely grateful to Tomaš Glanc, who stepped forward and offered to write the text below at a time when the manuscript of the book was nearly complete. While it is shorter than most essays found here, it sketches key issues that connect Čaroděj's work to the many other practices discussed in this book. It is also based on the author's engagement with primary archival sources, and it is our hope that wider knowledge of these will become a valuable resource for future researchers, as well.

Čaroděj was the most influential underground filmmaker in Czechoslovakia, where he worked in this capacity mainly from 1979 to 1986, during the most intensive period of Czechoslovak underground film production. Born Lubomir Drožď in 1955, his pseudonym, Čaroděj, means “wizard” in Czech; his other pseudonyms have included Čaroděj OZ, Blumfeld S.M., and Homeless&Hungry, among others.

Several members of Drožďs family had a history of working in the film industry, including his great-grandfather, who ran a traveling cinema in Bohemia during the early years of film history after World War I, and his grandfather, who ran the business during the 1930s. Drožď attended an art high school in Prague (School of Applied Arts) in the early 1970s.