1968 – Hope

Colour, DIGIBETA
Czech Republic, 2008, 52 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Documentary Films - Out of Competition

Synopsis

The first part documentary series returns to the Prague Spring of 1968 – to the period of “Socialism with a human face” in which there was a glimmer of hope that society as a whole would fully recover. The film, pieced together solely from period footage without commentary, chronologically recalls the key moments of an era when the process of democratisation and revival was also accompanied by an extraordinary cultural boom. After only a few months, however, the post-January policies and planned economic reforms were stifled by the August invasion by the Warsaw Pact armies, which arrived to “rescue freedom from the planned counter-revolution”.

About the director

Viktor Polesný (b. 1948, Prague) graduated in documentary film direction from FAMU in 1977 and later worked in ČST and Kratky Film Praha. His extensive work which spans diverse genres is aimed primarily at television viewers. In addition to documentaries (such as Half-life, 1986); Fourty Years Later (2003); participation in the projects GEN, OKO, GENUS), he also directed the series Love Lost (2001) and the follow-up to the cult series Hospital on the Edge of Town.