Ludmila Zeman is a Czechoslovakian-Canadian artist, animator, and creator of children"s books
Background
She is the daughter of filmmaker Karel Zeman. Zeman was born in the Moravian Czechoslovakian city of Zlín (renamed Gottwaldov in 1949, through 1989). She worked as her father"s assistant for his final films, and married Eugen Spálený, the chief animator at his studio.
Education
She graduated from the college of art (Střední uměleckoprůmyslová škola) in Uherské Hradiště.
Career
They had two children, Linda and Malvinia. She launched a career in story books and animation for children. When the couple attempted to emigrate, the Czechoslovakian communist government refused them permission, accusing them of pro-Western leanings.
Zeman was told to leave the animation studio, and Spálený was drafted into menial construction work.
In the summer of 1984, the family escaped through Yugoslavia to a refugee camp in Austria, finally arriving in Canada to accept the teaching posts. The Cedar Tree of Life, a thirty-second animated segment the couple produced for the Canadian edition of Sesame Street, attracted the attention of the National Film Board of Canada, which invited the couple to make a short film on a topic of their choice.
Zeman"s production was Lord of the Sky, based on myths of the Canadian north Pacific First Nations and produced using paper cutouts. Following Lord of the Sky, Zeman and Spálený planned a feature-length animated film based on the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Karel Zeman had introduced the epic, which was among his favorite books, to Ludmila when she was eleven.
The concept was eventually developed into a trilogy of children"s books written and illustrated by Zeman: Gilgamesh the King (1991), The Revenge of Ishtar (1993), and The Last Quest of Gilgamesh (1995). The Embassy of Canada in Japan presented an exhibition of Ludmila Zeman"s work in Tokyo in 2011.