KUKK – Culture Critique Club

The joint film club of the Department of Hungarian Ethnography and Anthropology at Babeș–Bolyai University and the Tranzit Foundation presents this year’s open seminar of the Critical Cultural Studies course:

Mentors: Biró Botond, Erőss Réka, Plájás Ildikó Zonga, Seprődi Attila

Academic coordinator of the seminar: Csilla Könczei, cultural researcher, associate professor

This week we will watch:
Jan Němec: Oratorio for Prague (1968, 26 min., in english language with english subtitles)

The projection will be followed by a discussion in Hungarian. Moderator: Botond Bíró.

The documentary captures the events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Its author is Jan Němec, a major director of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s (Pearls of the Deep, A Report on the Party and the Guests). He originally intended to document the liberalising reforms under Dubček and the subsequent political thaw known as the “Prague Spring,” but history rewrote his script: on August 21, the tanks of the Soviet-led military invasion unexpectedly rolled in, bringing an abrupt end to the short-lived period of freedom. Němec’s film – which was successfully smuggled abroad – became the only authentic cinematic record of the events and, with Gene Moskowitz’s narration, proved to hundreds of millions of viewers around the world that the Warsaw Pact troops had not been invited in, contrary to official claims. Besides the visual documentation of the occupation, the film contains unique footage of the Prague Spring, that is unavailable any place else: about people singing and dancing freely in the streets and the hopeful public mood. After 1968, the director was deemed to silence in his homeland, and in 1974 he left for the West, returning only after the political transition.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp2PTiEUgPI

The event is free of charge. Everyone is warmly welcome.