Petr Skala is a video artist, film director and screenwriter. He is noted as one of the leading figures of Czech contemporary art scene. He graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1975. In 1967 he started producing his own experimental work, adopting video as a medium in 1982. In 1987 together with Radek Pilař he established the Video Department of the Union of Czech Visual Artists, which had been renamed three years later to the Video and Intermedia Association of the Union of Visual Artists. Since 1993, Skala has been the chairman of the organization and also a pedagogue at FAMU. “Skala’s films combine the principles of informel painting and abstract expressionism applied to the media of film. His approach was based on the manual method, on the application of artistic techniques to a scroll of raw or already exposed film – engraving, scratching, painting or drawing on it, burning holes in it or using specific chemical procedures.”