Biography
Vladimir "Vlado" Kristl was born 24 January 1923 in Zagreb, Croatia.[citation needed] Kristl first came to international prominence for his formally challenging and rigorous animations, particularly Don Kihot (freely inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote). The film is a "graphical and abstract masterpiece which went beyond all existing conventions" and was awarded the main prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Kristl regarded this film, which was not his first, as the one where he "was finally given a free rein".
In 1962 Kristl made General i resni clovek (The General and the real man), a satirical live action short film which got him into trouble with the board of censors. Following the banning of his early film The General in 1962, Kristl left Croatia and relocated to Germany where he created an incomparable body of work in the context of post-war European cinema. His work has a central position in the avant-garde scene in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, as well as the emergent radical political cinema in Germany in the 1960s influencing participants in the Oberhausen manifesto and the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 70s. In Germany, he created some of the key works of independent cinema in the 1960s, such as Arme Leute and Madeleine, Madeleine, and also began his cycle of uniquely anarchistic feature films.
He died in 2004, aged 81, in Munich, Germany. With his partner Jelena he had two children, Madeleine (b. 1966) and Pepe Stephan (b. 1968).
He published two books of poetry: Neznatna lirika (Insignificant lyrics, 1959), and Pet bijelih stepenica (Five white steps, 1961) in Croatian, and several books in German.[citation needed]
