Five countries of Warsaw Pact occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968. 50 years after, 5 directors from these 5 countries shot 5 short films about invasion from the point of view of people, who took part as occupants. A unique site-specific KineDok screening of the documentary Occupation 1968 will have its Czech premiere at KVIFF on July 4th at 7 pm in pop-up club Aeroport.
Documentary project about August 1968 is a collective subjective look on the soldiers of “friendly” armies and their thoughts and impressions about Czechoslovak occupation and their tasks within it. The main question is, how “a small person in Europe” behaves in the front of so known “big history”? Which role plays personal responsibility, preservation of personal point of view or moral, and what happens to it in the moment, when they have to choose between saving their life or obeying the rules? In order to get the most diverse views on this complicated topic, we decided to choose five directors from five countries of the former Warsaw Pact, which participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia – Russia, Poland, Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria.
The directors of 26 minutes long films are Stefan Komandarev (An Unnecessary Hero, Bulgaria), Marie Elisa Scheidt (Voices in the Forest, Germany), Magdalena Szymkow (Soldiers’ Wives & Spies, Poland), Evdokiya Moskvina (The Last Mission of General Ermakov, Russia) a Linda Dombrovszsky (Red Rose [Friendship and Love in the Time of Occupation], Hungary). The film was produced by Peter Kerekes who will attend the screening together with co-producer Filip Remunda and directors Evdokiya Moskvina, Marie Elisa Scheidt and Magdalena Szymkow. If you want to know more about this documentary, visit this website.
KineDok, which organizes the screening of Occupation 1968 at KVIFF, is a unique film club and distribution platform connecting six partner countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Norway, Romania and Slovakia). In a form of shared experience that overcomes the traditional walls of a cinema hall, KineDok comes to your local club, cafe, gallery, attic etc. and invites you not only to come and see the film on a big screen, but also to meet the makers or the protagonists of the film in an informal environment and discuss the issues with them.