Anna Barkovová
ANNA ALEXANDROVNA BARKOVA (1901-1976) Journalist and poet, meeting suspicious characters. Involved in immoral love affairs. Work in the Kremlin, fired. 1934 - Arrested, 5 years of penal servitude in Karaganda. Lived in Ukraine during the WWII. 1946 - Arrested, 5 years of penal servitude in the Komi Republic. 1956 - Rehabilitated, disability pension. 1957 - Arrested, 10 years of penal servitude. The film 8 Heads of Madness is about the eternal struggle between the artist and external circumstances, the artist and her demons and longings. 8 Heads of Madness is a drama woven from fragments of an appalling era. An unhappy cross-section of the 20th century in an unhappy country, as seen through the sensitive, perceptive vision of a poet.
"The Magic Voice Of A Rebel" portrays the story of the Czech singer Marta Kubisová, who without never intending it, became a symbol of freedom for all generations in the newly free Czhecoslovakia in 1989. It is Marta herself who tells us her life story and how the Soviet invasion in Czechoslvakia in 1968 changed her life. Because of her deep involvement in the Prague Spring movement, she went from being the most popular singer in the country to being banned and suffering a sudden removal from the public scene by the new authorities imposed from Moscow. She refused to escape to exile and together with other banned intelectuals and artists became a disident instead. Blacklisted and persecuted by the secret police, she also suffered the betrayal of beloved people who were collaborating with the regime.
