From the behavior, discourse, and appearance of individual actors, Vachek composes, in the form of a mosaic, a broad and many-layered film-argument about Czechoslovak democracy in the period of its rebirth, all administered with the director’s inimitable point of view.
Veteran journalist and author Edward Behr spent a year investigating the rise and fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. Executed on Christmas Day 1989, Ceausescu was once a hero to his own people, and in the west. Behr's film reveals the truth behind the myth, in a tale of megalomania, farce, and horror.
Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist Ludvik Svoboda was elected. Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.
Filmmaker Jan Nemec and his crew risked their lives to create this historic documentary account of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The award-winning work is the only filmed record of the invasion. Oratorio for Prague began as a study of the liberalization of Czechoslovakia and then continued when the Russian forces moved in. The gripping footage was broadcast by television, providing the first report of the event. In addition to the news footage, the film features never-before-viewed scenes taken prior to the invasion that crushed Prague's anti-Communist movement.
