Revisit the work of Milos Forman with these five films

Forman passed away on Friday in the U.S. after a short illness, his wife, Martina, told Czech news agency CTK.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Milos, real name Jan Tomas Forman, graduated from the Prague Film Faculty of the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and won acclaim with films like Black Peter and Oscar-nominated The Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman's Ball, before fleeing Europe in 1968 to become an American citizen.

In August 1968, just days before the Soviet-led crackdown that followed the Prague Spring uprising, Forman left Czechoslovakia for France, moving to the United States a few months later.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson, and Amadeus both triumphed at the Oscars. The film was a huge success, earning nine Oscar nominations and winning five - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Forman's Amadeus, a fictionalised biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, also swept the Oscars, fetching him his second best director trophy apart from registering seven other wins at the 57th Academy Awards. His other movies included Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), Man on the Moon (1999) and Goya's Ghosts (2006), the latter of which proved to be his final directorial offering.

Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav in 1932; after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, his mother died in concentration camps.

"No matter what subject or genre he tackles, Miloš finds the universality of the human experience in every story, allowing us - his rapt audience - to recognize ourselves within the struggle for free expression and self-determination that Miloš so aptly portrays on the silver screen", past DGA President Taylor Hackford said at the time.

Forman would remain in Europe after the war, and in the early 1960s he began making films.

"In his films you can see the author", he said.

Forman's first USA film "Taking Off" (1971) was also filmed with non-actors but failed to impress a non-European audience.

In this file photo taken on October 09, 2009 Czech-born U.S. film director Milos Forman poses in Paris. They were named after comedian Andy Kaufman and Jim Carrey, who played the part of Kaufman in "Man on the Moon". They also had twin sons.