28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

ji-hlavadok-revuecdfEmerging producersInspiration Forum
Foreigner Looking for an Apartment: France

Foreigner Looking for an Apartment: France

running time: 70 min.

synopsis

Czechoslovaki – Read and Understand

Evellyn Sullerot – Thursday Guest

Hugo’s City

Hugo’s Return

Interview with a Czechoslovak Refugee

biography

Czechs and Slovaks were seeking refuge in France even before the founding of Czechoslovakia. A second wave of emigration followed the rise of Nazism, and the most recent wave came after the country’s occupation in 1968. But Czechoslovak emigration to France is primarily the story of individuals trying to make it in their new surroundings. In view of the importance of culture in France, the country has attracted primarily artists and intellectuals. According to official statistics, France was home to around 20,000 Czechoslovaks in 1946 but only 2,900 in 1975, to which we must add a community of naturalized immigrants numbering around 10,000 individuals. It is thus no wonder that there is a shortage of audiovisual records. In the end, our selection contains only a few examples of the most characteristic footage we were able to find in the French television archives. The interview with the anonymous Czechoslovak refugee was shot on 2 September 1968 in Vienna. It is of interest because it was broadcast live to Paris, where it was shown in the main news program. The interviews with Pavel Tigrid and Jan Beneš were made as part of La Tchécoslovaquie, an overview of Czechoslovak culture broadcast on 12 September 1968 that covered everything from Hašek and Kafka to contemporary emigre authors. In 1980, Milan Kundera appeared on the prestigious discussion show L’invité du jeudi (Thursday’s Guest), where he considered his own feelings as an exile as well as the decline of the Western society in which he was living. The final two examples are from the films Hugo’s City (1986) and The Return of Hugo (1990), and are quite unique. The first shows the Czechoslovak emigre Marek Jakubec as the fictional Hugo describing a trip to Prague (where spent his childhood but where he cannot return from his exile) to his friend, the director Jacques Deschamps. The result is a poetic and nostalgic walk through 1980s Prague. In the sequel, Jakubec films himself and must, among other things, face his father and his recriminations.

Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Creative Europe Media
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms