Special Event

The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The collage of personal memories, staged scenes and archives of collective memory compares the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution and shows the exposure, conflict, crisis, and catharsis of the post-communist society. Democracy can be saved through creative laughter, dissolving the untouchability and hypertrophic egos of the representatives of state institutions. The Internet frees the society from representatives of the non-functional connecting link that prevents direct communication between citizens and institutions of power. “I can see you until I spot you. Once I spot you, I cannot see you anymore.” K. Vachek

In the summer of 1938, American producer and director Herbert Kline came to Czechoslovakia to document the crisis in Europe. At that time, violence caused by Nazi small combat troops culminated in the Czechoslovak border region, although the officially Runciman Report, influenced by the Berlin and Sudeten German propaganda described the oppression of the Germans. The film Crisis  played a significant role in rebutting the distorted arguments. The film crew travelled all over Czechoslovakia for several months, recording the coexistence of the Czechs and Germans and filming the treasonous actions of the Henleinists who had only one goal – to disrupt the democratic republic.  Restored by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. “In Habrová near the Czech border, soldiers are restoring order after a Nazi pogrom. German democrats, Czechs, Catholics and Jews were murdered in bed and shot in the street. Yet these people had lived here together for centuries. Anyone who was not a Nazi, was identified as a victim.” From the film Crisis

Hotel Sunrise (2016), the masterwork by promising Slovak documentary filmmaker Marie Rumanová (1989-2019) featuring an oppressive atmosphere and feelings of sadness and hopelessness, takes us on a journey through the dark gateway into Eastern Europe via the last railway station on the Slovak-Ukrainian border in Čierna nad Tisou. The documentary’s suggestive observation, never before seen in the Czech-Slovak context, is testimony to the director's pure talent and sensitivity. In the presence of her close colleagues, teachers and friends, along with the screening of the film, we will commemorate the future work of this promising young author from her time as a student. "I started making the film in the period when I began feeling pressure from the system in which I felt like a slave. I was worried with how to reconcile my personal happiness so that it would not be in spite of some world order." M. Rumanová