Happy Birthday, Democracy!

Everything started on the November, 17th 1989. The university students gathered for the piety act at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Nazi murder of Jan Opletal. Then the crowd decided to march to the centre of Prague. The peaceful mass of students was stopped by the armed policemen who brutally beaten them up.

After this the end of communist regime started to count down and in little more then a moth was the dissident Vaclav Havel elected as the president of Czechoslovakia. Something unbelievable became a reality!

This year the democracy celebrates its 18th birthday which means it officially becomes an adult. During its 18 years went through many euphories but also disappointments. It has welcome visitors such as John Paul II. and George Bush, on the other hand some guests as the Russian army who ‘visited’ for more then two decades finally left. It lost its Slovak leg which decided to walk on its own and with its own skin has experienced what the capitalism all brings. It witnessed not only constant disputes between the political parties but even a coalition among the biggest political rivals.Nevertheless, there is a reason to celebrate; democracy achieved its full-age in a relative health despite of the fact that the unreformed communists have higher preferences then each of the two minority government parties. Happy Birthday!

Memory of The Crystal Night in Prague

Events that happened during the night from the 9th to the 10th November 1938 activated the Hitler’s devilish plan to eliminate completely one population.
The excuse of the Crystal Night was a attempt of a Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, to kill a secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst von Rath.
During this night many Jewish synagogues and cemeteries were plundered, the shops of the Jewish people destroyed and books significant to the Hebraic religion publicly burnt on squares. The window glasses of the Jewish shops shined when they were being broken so this is the reason the night got its unusual adjective the Crystal.

It is Saturday afternoon, 10th of November 2007, 69th anniversary of the Crystal Night. By the Old-New Synagogue in Prague are gathering people to memorize the tragic event. But it is not so easy to get this day to the Jewish center. The neo-Nazis under the name of New National Democrats announced their march and against them are ready to protest the ultra-left radicals. Close by the Synagogue are standing lines of policemen and the water cannon.
But the people who want to express their piety to the victims are not discouraged, on the other hand, in this way they also want to reject any form of Nazism and violence. Wearing a symbolic David star on their coats are singing, led by the rabbi Sidon, a prayer for the martyrs while the scream of the extremists is heard by the Synagogue. The police has the whole Jewish quarter under control, nobody from the Nazis or the anarchists can get there. Representatives of many institutions, politicians and other persons of the Czech culture sphere joined The Hebraic community to show their compassion with the victims of holocaust. Cardinal Vlk in his short speech mentioned: ‘By my presence here today I express my solidarity in a serious danger that some people reject or deprecate the terror of holocaust or even they are adopting the ideas that caused it.’

Thinking through film!

From the 23rd - 28th of October 2007 took place in Jihlava, Czech Republic, the International Festival of Documentary Films, the biggest event of this kind in Central and Eastern Europe. The 11th annual meeting of fans of this genre offered again a unique selection of Czech and international films under a motto: 'Thinking through film.'

The festival program as always was divided into three main contest categories. The first one: 'Good work' offers every year thematically interesting documentaries from all over the world, not only the famous ones but also those the have not been discovered yet. The second category: 'Between the seas' presented this year high-quality films from 6 European counties, the special interest was paid this time to the Eastern European film. The last section: 'Czech joy' concentrates on the domestic documentaries, 13 films from the Czech production participated in the contest this year. The non-competition category: 'Transparent beings' offers a retrospective of important persons of the world cinematography, this year it was dedicated to the legend of the French film, Chris Marker, the German film essayist Harun Farock and the Argentinean director Raymund Gleyzer.

The price 'The best world documentary’ in a category 'Good work' was given to a Chinese director James T. Hong for his 731: Two versions of Hell. As 'The best Czech documentary' in the section 'Czech joy' was considered A Town Called Hermitage by Ondřej Provazník and Martin Dušek. The jury decided that 'The best documentary of Central and Eastern Europe' is the film Artel by a Russian director Sergei Loznitza.
The special award of the festival ‘The Benefit to the World Cinematography’ was given to a Czech origin director Woody Vašulka, who belongs to the first generation of the experimenters with the video technology. He lives from 1965 in the U.S. where he co-founded the Inter-media theatre of electronic media - The Kitchen in New York.