Conspiracy 89

In April 2009, Václav Havel proposed to director Petr Jančárek to “… film the rest of his life”.  Their almost three-year collaboration, ended with Havel's death, characterized total openness, the ex-president's confidence in the director and the creator's responsibility towards his hero. Feature documentary This Is Havel Speaking, Can You Hear Me? arises from unique material, profiting from the non-existent distinction between the private and public forms of the world personality. According to the director, "it certainly does not intend to become a formally polished monument to the giant or slogan in the encyclopedia of world statesmen."   For the first time, parts of an exceptional film will be screened at the Ji.hlava festival. The discussion will be focused on the relationship between the creator and statesman, the development of the project and its author concept.  

Restitution and Prostitution Comedy of the 1990sThe post-Velvet Revolution era in Czechoslovakia brought along a huge transformation of the society. Millions of citizens started their own businesses and tens of thousands received previously nationalized estates. Czech film, impacted by privatization of Prague’s Barrandov Studios and an advent of independent producers, was continuously mirroring this situation.A lecture by Kamil Fila full of video fragments from films like e.g. The Sun, Hay and Erotica, Playgirls, Even Greater Dumbass Than We Hoped For and many others. Length: 100 minutes

Michal Hýbek (1957–2003) used to be an amateur film-maker.  In his clip Courtyards 1981, he captured the famous exhibition that took place in Malá Strana, Prague. Together with P. Bárta, they became famous for their Breakfast (1984) on J. Prévert’s poem. Away from the castle, away! (1986) is an authentic and investigative view on the discovery of St. Maurus reliquary. His documentary Letters to Olga (1986) was the first to introduce “Havel, a dissident” to the world, capturing his work on a book of letters from prison. After the Velvet Revolution, he created an essay on Havel’s March journey, Paris - London or There and Back with Mr. President (1990). Screening with a commentary by Jan Bernard.

Toward the end of the state-run socialism era, Eastern bloc citizens were being supplied with film and TV images of the decline of civilization and crumbling ecosystems. Today’s “environmental sorrow” thus already had its predecessor back then. Apart from issues like air, soil and water pollution (e.g. in Jan Svěrák’s student film Oil Gobblers), a threat of nuclear conflict raised by the Chernobyl disaster was very alive at the time. The lecture by Kamil Fila will focus on well-known and unfamiliar, eloquent and intensive, but also totally weird examples of fears representative of this period.  

In spring 1989, Hýbek and Jaroslav Hanzel shot interviews with dissidents for Hýbek’s film Czechoslovakian taboos 1968-1989. They presented it while travelling across the Baltics and Russia, interviewing the representatives of democratic movements. A. Dubček agreed to shoot an interview for a Moscow TV show Vzglyad.  It was made in his apartment in Bratislava on September 12, 1989.Screening with a commentary by Jan Bernard.

Theatricality Workshop on November 17th A demonstration as a theatrical performance? The Theatricality Workshop will present the concept of theatricality of public events on the 17th of November. The authors will offer their documentaries for a joint open discussion with invited personalities devoting themselves to theatricality and documentary film. Together they will analyze the theatrical aspects of the examination of symbolic behavior through an audiovisual medium at the event on the 17th of November. E.g., they will try to reveal the essence of political demonstrations, parades and speeches.   Preview: Observation on the 17th of November 2018  Directed by David Neumann and Sara Jarošová Cinematography by David Neumann, Sara Jarošová, Karolína Hruboňová, and Assel Torgayeva Country of production: Czech Republic Year made: 2019   Preview: Television Tribune  Directed by David Neumann and Sara Jarošová Cinematography by David Neumann, Sara Jarošová, and Karolína Hruboňová Country of production: Czech Republic Year made: 2019

The documentary reflects on thirty years of renewed democracy by way of a court hearing, whose subject matter. The film brings together actors in the roles of the plaintiff, defense counsel and judge with real people who represent Czech society as spectators, witnesses and members of the jury. The film is clearly inspired by a court hearing regarding a two-generation dispute filmed by Czechoslovak Television in 1966. “The story of an idealism and naivety of one and rationality of others. Review of thirty years of a divided society, who did not know about it. ” R. Sedláček

A dynamic overview of Czech television commercials since the time of late socialism until the capitalist economic boom in the nineties. In interviews with advertising creatives and examples of the best and worst of Czech production, the transformation of marketing practices in relation to socio-economic changes is revealed.

The film shows the activity of students of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Through the confrontation of archives, memories of former students – now figures of the cultural scene – and the input of current students, it examines the most important political initiative of the film school students in the late 1980s.

Excerpts from the upcoming film examines the formation of the new political system in Czechoslovakia after 1968 and the circumstances surrounding its collapse in the late 1980s. Through the testimony of members of the ruling party during the peak of normalization, the film reveals their delusions, their lust for power, and their mutual differences, and the recently revealed backdrop of events leading to November 1989.

In a documentary by Juraj Herz, President Václav Havel talks to Oscar Award-winning actor Maximilian Schell about his vision for the new millennium. The actor and politician were also connected by the fact that Schell had read Havel's thank-you speech on the occasion of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt in October 1989.