2001

We live in an era when the media continually floods us with new information and thus we quickly forget what it was like yesterday, a month ago, a year or even years ago. This film gives viewers the opportunity to relive events from the most recent history of the Czech state together with its heroes, and also to confront changes in their views and attitudes with their own changing opinions and outlook. It’s a film not only about them, but also about us…

For the last twelve years the film crew has been following the lives of four people who were among those who stepped up onto the tribune on Wenceslas Square in Prague in November 1989. Musician Michael Kocáb, dissident Jan Ruml, young participant in the incursion on Národní třída Kryštof Rímský and student leader Martin Mejstřík. The post-November period opened up new possibilities and opportunities for all of them. This unique film project captures their quests, misconceptions, resolutions and doubts on the way to finding their own place in the troubled waters of a transforming society.

The film does not aim to pass judgement nor express unequivocal assessment.

The filming was governed by two principles: an open attitude towards everything which fate lays in the hands of the “heroes”, and the filmmakers’ approach – beginning with the selection of the questions and ending with the choice of the film’s means of expression. Above all, however, the filmmakers place emphasis on the paradoxical nature of human existence, the balance between the humorous and the serious, the deliberate exclusion of explicit testimonies of so-called important themes, on playfulness and joy of the picturesque; the project also shows a clear attempt to find authentic essential feelings below the surface, behind the exhibition presented for the camera.

Protagonists

Martin Mejstřík, in 1989 editor-in-chief of a non-conformist student magazine and one of the leaders of the students’ strike

Michael Kocáb, in 1989 a rock musician, founder of the Bridges initiative which endeavoured to enable dialogue between dissent and the Communist authority of the time

Jan Ruml, in 1989 a dissident and press spokesman for the Civic Forum movement

Kryštof Rímský, in 1989 a secondary-school pupil and the youngest witness of the brutal police incursion on Národní třída

The film was made with the financial support of the State fund of the Czech Republic for the support and development of Czech cinematography.

© Czech television