Education
From 1955, she studied at the Film and television School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
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Milena Jelinek
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She wrote the screenplay for the film Zapomenuté světlo (Forgotten Light), which was awarded three Czechoslovakian Lions in 1997. Her name is associated with the golden generation of Czechoslovakian filmmakers, known as Czechoslovakian New Wave. One of her early screenplays, written under her maiden name and titled Snadný život (An Easy Life), was filmed by Miloš Makovec and Jiří Brdečka.
Already during her studies, she took part in various anti-communist protests.
According to her own words, the Czechoslovak president Antonín Novotný in a speech against "unreliable writers" even listed her name as a "subversive person". Frederick Jelinek emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States of America in 1949, however, in 1957 he visited Vienna as a participant of a professional conference.
During his stay, he decided to visit his old friends in Prague. He met and befriended Milena Tobolová during a meeting with the film director Miloš Forman in a Prague"s café.
Gradually, they became close and eventually they decided to marry.
However, their application for marriage was denied on several occasions by communist authorities. In 1960, Frederick Jelinek was proclaimed "persona non grata" in Czechoslovakia and his planned visits were banned permanently. Coincidentally, the same year Tobolová received permission by the government to leave the country.
In January, 1961, she left to the United States of America and shortly after that she married Jelinek.
In the United States of America, she gradually managed to find a place in the world of film, mainly thanks to another émigré, filmmaker František Daniel. She already knew him from the school in Prague, and met him again at the American Film Institute in Los Los Angeles
In 1980, she joined him and began teaching screenwriting at the Columbia University in New New York At the University, she spent a major part of her professional career.
She is the author of the script for the play Adina, staged in 2007 in the Vinohrady Theatre, Prague.
The play depicts the life story of the renowned Czechoslovakian pre-War actor Adina Mandlová. Foreign the screenplay for the film Zapomenuté světlo (Forgotten Light), she found an inspiration in a short story by the Czechoslovakian Catholic priest and writer Jakub Deml.
