Frane Milčinski - Ježek

Frane Milčinski - Ježek (1914-88), actor, director, author of screen and radio plays (co-screenwriter of Kekec, which received the Golden Lion in the Children’s Film category at the Venice Film Festival in 1952), singer, poet and writer, was one of the most prominent media personalities in Slovenia and without a doubt Slovenia’s greatest humorist and satirist.

He received numerous awards for his work, including the Prešeren award (the most prestigious Slovenian award for the arts) for lifetime achievements in 1975.

Throughout his life, Ježek remained a man of and for the people. He was convinced that comedians are not the kind of people who have anpartment on Mount Olympus, a weekend cottage on Parnassus, or the other way round: our place is at the foot of the slope, where ordinary people are grinding their way through the pressures of everyday life. We are not ashamed to be down here, nor to be comedians; on the contrary, as Shakespeare had it, we are proud to be soldiers.

In spite of Ježek’s great popularity, his work has become widely available only in the last ten years, with the release of CDs, audiobooks and books of his short stories, poems and children’s stories by Sanje.