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A young look at history

Despite Slovakian dominance in the recent Plzen festival, two Czech newcomers stood out.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

About 70 years ago, Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead in a backyard in Prague, under a window in his apartment. The circumstances surrounding his death – which we find a current echo in the murder of Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin in April this year – have been a source of intrigue and controversy throughout posterity: Did he jump? Did he fall? Was he pushed?

The ice hockey player was forced into a uranium mine for 13 years. He died at the age of 9, as a broken man.

The original investigation, led by the Communist government (made up of a bunch of Masaryk's enemies), delivered, not unexpectedly, a verdict on suicide. 20 years later, during the short-lived Prague Year in 1968, a new investigation revealed that the incident was probably an accident (but did not rule out the possibility of murder). Early in the 1990 century, after the velvet revolution that led to the so-called velvet divorce between what became the Czechoslovak Republic and Slovakia, the conclusion after the investigation was changed to murder.

Turning point

Masaryk's violent end turned out to be an important turning point in Czechoslovak history – the direction could have been very different if this charismatic figure, a convinced internationalist (his mother was an American), had survived. But the Soviet Union quickly took a staunch stalinist stance, with dire consequences for anyone who might be suspected of deviation – or of planning deviation – from the party line.

Perhaps the most spectacular and remarkable example of this came in 1950, when twelve players on Czechoslovakia's ice hockey team – who had won the World Cup in Sweden the year before – were arrested just before leaving for London, defending the World Cup title. Following a "court case", everyone was sentenced to prison sentences for their supposedly treacherous plans to jump off (based on overheard small talk in a pub). Some received a few months, but several received soaring penalties. Keeper Bohumil Modry got 15 years, the two attackers Gustav Bubník and Stanislav Konopásek twelve years each.

The Last Shift of Tomás Hisem was filmed in a single day – the last of the miner's working days.

These judgments were later reduced by the president's pardon, but the damage had already happened: Modry spent 13 years in prison in Prague and Plzen, and was forced to work in an uranium mine. He died at the age of 47 as a broken man, a few weeks after his release. Czechoslovakia, which has long been an ice hockey nation, failed to win the World Cup title again until 1972 – although the team, sensational enough by the circumstances, took bronze in 1955, 1957 and 1959.

New Czechoslovak filmmakers

The persecution and imprisonment of the Czechoslovak ice hockey team contains enough stronger-than-fiction material for a television series, but Prague-based student Michaela Rezová covers the whole saga in just twelve minutes in her dazzling, informative documentary Štvanice.

Rezová was born in 1992, in the last months of Czechoslovakia before the "divorce" was formalized on January 1, 1993. She is now enrolled at both UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design) and DAMU (Theater Faculty of Performing Arts) where she studies film , TV graphics and animation. Štvanice is, on one level, an animated film that gives the story a skittish life with the help of stimulating dynamic graphics. Here, the director makes use of old newspaper images and film newspaper footage and occasionally mimics the old-fashioned iconography of the 1940s and 1950s sports media.

The well-chosen movie title Štvanice is the Czechoslovak word for "chasing" or "persecution," and also the nickname of the beloved hockey stadium on an island of the same name in Prague's Voltava River (formerly a favorite game of game hunting). Completed and screened for the first time last year, the film was one of two outstanding documentaries among the student short films of the Finále festival in Plzen (the famous birthplace of Pilsen).

Slovak sweep

Final, an acronym meaning "movies of our time" (FIlmy NASich Let), started in 1968, in the midst of the Prague Year's optimism – but soon supported political problems. Between 1970 and 1989, after becoming an annual Czechoslovak film production event, it was halted by the authorities. Since 2014, half the limelight has been shared with Slovak film, which in recent festivals has dominated the awards. Slovak productions also took the jury by storm this year, including Aaron Lodis Heavy Heart – a touching, easily accessible documentary about music in the persecuted space community, and the winner of best documentary.

Last Shift

The lack of prices for Czech film has led to a lot of self-examination in the country's film center – but promising things are going on in the students' short film department, which may give cause for optimism. Jindrich Andrs, two years younger than Rezová, is studying short films at FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague, one of the world's most prestigious film schools. The myriad of famous former students include Milos Forman, a giant in the film world. (The death of the chairman on April 13 also cast a strong shadow over the Plzen festival.)

Helena Trestíková is another former student and now a teacher at the school. Her films – several recorded over years, even decades – have established Trestíková primarily by European documentaries.

Andrs' approach could hardly have been more different from that found in Trestíková's films, as in the 29-minute underground bag The Last Shift of Tomás Hisem. The footage was made within a single day, by the man who gave the film its name – Tomás Hisem, security inspector at the Paskov mine near the town of Ostrava, which was closed in March 2017. The opening text states that on this last of Hisem's business days, he smuggled in a camera in the workplace, provided by Andrs. With the footage he acquired with this camera attached to the helmet, it also became possible for outsiders to experience the darkness and the roaring machine sounds found in an old-fashioned coal mine.

A time capsule

The Last Shift, which is not recommended for people with claustrophobia, throws us straight into hard, dirty body work. It is both poignant and thought-provoking to see the camaraderie between the coal miners, an experience enhanced by the salty, tough humor (they find it particularly amusing that their weariness should be enjoyed in the cinematic form of the "Prague Fife"). The professionalism with which the work is carried out is also obvious: The decision here is to maintain productivity and standards to the bitter end. The scroll text also says that 180 tonnes of coal were extracted from the Paskov mine during that one day.

Foreign Minister Masaryk's violent end turned out to be an important turning point in Czechoslovakian history.

The Last Shift of Tomás Hisem has an obvious value as a time capsule. It is also a very effective elegy over a lifestyle that disappeared from many industrial countries both years and decades ago, but which persists in certain pockets of the former Eastern bloc.

More documentaries are sure to be made about the consequences Paskov's closure – and the loss of 2500 jobs – will have on Ostrava, in a part of the country where unemployment already represents double-digit numbers. However, the city's inhabitants are renowned for their toughness and resilience, hardened as they are by volatility and economic downturns, whether capitalist or communist. They dig deep.

Neil Young
Neil Young
Young is a regular film critic for Modern Times Review.

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