Martin Bouda speaks at Prague Spring 50

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04/12/2018 Added

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Bouda gives his talk "Prague Spring on Television—Seeds and Aftermath" at Prague Spring 50. https://praguespring50.unl.edu/speakers#martin-bouda

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[00:00:10.410]Good morning.
[00:00:12.300]My presentation will be slightly different
[00:00:14.440]from the previous ones because it's based
[00:00:17.619]on some audiovisual materials,
[00:00:20.190]and I have also a lot of slides there.
[00:00:23.850]So hopefully we'll make it on time.
[00:00:28.560]What I did for this presentation was to
[00:00:31.860]go to the archives of Czech Television
[00:00:35.050]and I was trying to find
[00:00:37.450]some programs, some samples of programs
[00:00:42.670]what were important for the whole process of Prague Spring.
[00:00:48.220]And I would like to prove that
[00:00:50.800]Czechoslovakia Television then
[00:00:53.610]wasn't only reflecting all the changes in the society,
[00:00:58.090]but it was also playing an active role
[00:01:03.918]on triggering all the changes
[00:01:09.657]towards liberalization.
[00:01:13.190]So let's go.
[00:01:16.920]I will start in the 1950s.
[00:01:21.400]The Czechoslovak Television started to broadcast
[00:01:24.073]in 1st May 1953 during starnist era.
[00:01:29.760]And in the same year there was also
[00:01:33.750]censorship started by establishing
[00:01:37.030]the main Administration of Press Supervision.
[00:01:39.940]So television has been, since its very beginning,
[00:01:43.000]under control and under pressure of authorities.
[00:01:50.990]But despite this, in the late '50s,
[00:01:56.050]there were more freedom given to creators
[00:02:00.060]because they managed to create satirical programs,
[00:02:05.516](mumbles) "Don't be angry, Man"
[00:02:08.140]that investigated some shortcomings of everyday life,
[00:02:13.560]and it was first really critical program
[00:02:18.040]and also first very controversial program.
[00:02:21.700]And the result was real outrage of the communist party
[00:02:27.150]and many creators were forced to leave TV.
[00:02:33.860]So television was recovering from this purge
[00:02:38.908]until the mid 1960s.
[00:02:44.050]Important moment was when new
[00:02:49.330]Director General was appointed in 1963,
[00:02:53.420]and this person was Jiri Pelikan
[00:02:56.575]who saw the changes in the society,
[00:03:01.760]and he decided to change the institution
[00:03:10.260]which was considered to be,
[00:03:13.120]at the time, most conservative of all media.
[00:03:17.660]And he wanted to give more,
[00:03:22.820]more room for TV makers to express
[00:03:28.560]their real opinions.
[00:03:33.040]He also started some international cooperation,
[00:03:37.620]not only with East European televisions,
[00:03:40.640]but also the Western European televisions.
[00:03:43.480]So he was often criticized for this approach.
[00:03:52.038]Among seeds of the Prague Spring itself,
[00:03:55.366]among the political events,
[00:03:58.810]the most important was abolishing the censorship
[00:04:03.910]during February 1968,
[00:04:07.230]and also appointment of Alexander Dubcek
[00:04:11.320]and Ludvik Svodboda to the role of President
[00:04:17.676]and General Secretary of the Communist Party.
[00:04:22.760]From both events we keep some footage in our archives,
[00:04:27.060]so I'll just play very shortly a clip from...
[00:04:39.715]It should play out.
[00:04:43.881](voice overpowered by video)
[00:05:14.692]I will skip it because we have two other videos
[00:05:19.160]to play.
[00:05:23.380]So the role of Czechoslovak TV rapidly changed
[00:05:27.680]from this time.
[00:05:31.610]Czechoslovak TV tried to
[00:05:37.930]discuss new topics that
[00:05:42.020]were not allowed to be discussed before,
[00:05:44.900]like for example the role of the Communist Party
[00:05:48.510]in Czechoslovakia or the role of women in society,
[00:05:55.210]and also some cases from the '50s
[00:06:00.373]that were forbidden to be discussed before
[00:06:04.120]were discussed like, for example,
[00:06:07.730]strange circumstances of that of
[00:06:10.560]former minister (mumbles).
[00:06:15.693]I recall this era to be a golden era
[00:06:18.940]of current affair programs.
[00:06:24.576]I chose some very crucial series for this time.
[00:06:31.930]I would emphasize these two series:
[00:06:35.960]probes and public affair.
[00:06:38.350]They were trying to be investigative
[00:06:42.070]and too critical to shortcomings of society;
[00:06:50.970]as well as some reportage programs,
[00:06:54.000]Nosy Camera and Czechoslovakia Expedition;
[00:06:57.820]and a very important series was Face to Face series
[00:07:05.290]which gave some room for significant
[00:07:09.720]personalities of cultural and political life
[00:07:13.220]to make comments on some topics.
[00:07:20.610]When I was going through our archives,
[00:07:25.620]I bumped into or came across
[00:07:27.920]two very interesting program that was made in 1967,
[00:07:35.520]and it was broadcast in February '68.
[00:07:38.300]And I would call this current affair drama
[00:07:41.120]because it's not,
[00:07:45.826]it's fictional, it's actually drama
[00:07:47.730]but it's kind of critical TV play
[00:07:52.970]about social protectionism and allelism.
[00:07:59.940]I would just say (mumbles) of the story,
[00:08:04.780]some residents of communist official
[00:08:09.650]was electrified instead of rich,
[00:08:19.348]and also a journalist who pointed to this
[00:08:23.930]is under pressure to deny it.
[00:08:26.770]And this program is important because for the first time,
[00:08:32.460]a communist is shown here as a bad guy
[00:08:37.240]because the main villain here is
[00:08:42.570]secretary of district national committee named Stoklasa.
[00:08:48.657]And we may see some sample where this guy
[00:08:52.870]is forced to explain the whole affair
[00:08:58.250]about trification in front of the people of the village.
[00:11:17.260]Okay, now it may seem to be funny
[00:11:19.699]and naive, but at the time it was quite revolutionary
[00:11:26.030]because it showed the top rated communist
[00:11:32.640]to be a really bad guy.
[00:11:38.041]Another very important series was Nosy Camera.
[00:11:40.960]As I mentioned before, it became a phenomenon
[00:11:44.320]in '62 when many creative journalists
[00:11:49.250]came to do crew.
[00:11:51.350]And there were some parts that we very
[00:11:59.870]significant, very controversial.
[00:12:03.130]I would mention one of them.
[00:12:05.920]It was the part that was broadcast in March '64,
[00:12:11.590]the Choice of Profession.
[00:12:13.460]And it was investigated story of a girl
[00:12:21.150]who was dismissed from school
[00:12:23.090]due to her class origin, inappropriate class origin.
[00:12:28.160]And after it was broadcast it caused
[00:12:34.040]outrage to the party and it was called
[00:12:38.370]to be anti-state program,
[00:12:40.660]and they even organized some protest resolutions
[00:12:46.150]in the factors, even workers.
[00:12:49.550]And makers were under risk of being fired.
[00:12:57.610]But Yuri Parikan, the director,
[00:13:01.510]stood up for them.
[00:13:03.930]But the chief of the editorial board
[00:13:08.060]was given an ultimatum,
[00:13:10.570]either he would read a denial on TV
[00:13:13.890]or the girl and her brother
[00:13:17.520]wouldn't be allowed to study at a school
[00:13:20.693]and her father would be fired.
[00:13:23.170]So the chief of the editorial board
[00:13:26.870]read this denial, but according to officials
[00:13:31.540]it wasn't truly felt.
[00:13:33.550]So the father was fired from work.
[00:13:39.890]And another very important episode was Dispute.
[00:13:44.810]It was kind of docudrama.
[00:13:46.310]It was staged trial between two generations.
[00:13:51.364]One one side there was the generation of
[00:13:56.150]people who were young in the 1950s,
[00:13:58.960]and on the other side there was a new generation
[00:14:02.440]of young people who were born after World War II or during.
[00:14:08.650]And the young generation sued the previous generation
[00:14:12.070]for betrayal of the socialism.
[00:14:14.810]They demanded socialism free from
[00:14:20.130]empty phrases, demagogue and so on.
[00:14:23.720]And it was also very controversial.
[00:14:26.840]And it continues in another part.
[00:14:31.030]It was called Jury.
[00:14:35.555]It was inspired by 12 Angry Men, a famous Hollywood movie.
[00:14:44.278]It was arranged as kind of process
[00:14:50.520]when the jurors should decide lawsuits
[00:14:53.750]from the previous result.
[00:14:56.270]And among the jurors,
[00:15:00.170]there were a lot of
[00:15:02.680]very famous, significant persons
[00:15:05.710]of then political and culture life.
[00:15:11.430]For example they were famous travelers,
[00:15:15.740]Jiri Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund.
[00:15:18.360]And I may play you a sample
[00:15:23.988]from which you fill find out
[00:15:27.100]why this program was banned.
[00:15:29.710]It was made in '66,
[00:15:31.840]but it wasn't allowed to be broadcast at all.
[00:15:34.340]It was broadcast in March '68.
[00:17:39.893]And so that's very controversial in '66.
[00:17:45.138]And there was another interesting episode.
[00:17:49.230]It's called Control.
[00:17:53.370]It's a TV crew visited the Mirov Prison
[00:17:57.930]and they not only investigated living conditions
[00:18:01.960]of current prisoners,
[00:18:03.430]but also searched for some cases of illegal beating
[00:18:09.120]of political prisoners in 1950s.
[00:18:14.360]It was quite revolutionary because for the first time
[00:18:18.457]the television focused on some crimes of the 1950s.
[00:18:23.650]So I may play some sample from a confrontation
[00:18:28.590]between then guard, Smarzek, whose name was Smarzek,
[00:18:33.338]who was beating the prisoners,
[00:18:35.140]and former, particular prisoner Otomi Bolzek.
[00:18:41.020]So it's a very emotive discussion.
[00:20:17.735]And so in this program there was also
[00:20:19.970]a final debate which brought very brave conclusions
[00:20:24.810]let's say for the time.
[00:20:27.666]So maybe just very, very small sample.
[00:20:58.907]But he wasn't released because of upcoming events.
[00:21:05.480]The final episode from this series I chose is
[00:21:11.070]episode called A Testimony for Warning.
[00:21:13.710]And a journalist, Cabanatua, investigated
[00:21:18.589]the case of The Great Trotskyist Council.
[00:21:23.588]It was a political trial in 1954
[00:21:27.580]that followed the trial with anti-state conspiracy
[00:21:32.550]centered around Rudolf Slansky.
[00:21:37.030]And the main victims,
[00:21:43.130]there were some economists
[00:21:46.480]and characters of enterprises.
[00:21:50.760]And we may see some testimony,
[00:21:52.610]very emotional testimony of a wife of
[00:21:58.799]one of the victims of this process, Mr. Rok,
[00:22:03.780]whose wife is emotionally explaining
[00:22:08.850]the circumstances of his arrest.
[00:22:12.400]And at the time Mr. Rok was already,
[00:22:18.970]had passed away.
[00:22:22.470]He passed away shortly after he was released from prison.
[00:22:27.615]So let's see.
[00:25:30.391](applauding)
[00:25:34.260]So this was broadcast in June '68,
[00:25:36.840]so they made it just a month before the Soviets came here.
[00:25:47.910]Another very important series was Czechoslovak Expedition.
[00:25:54.741]It was a 50-part series,
[00:25:55.640]and TV crews were traveling around the country
[00:26:00.730]and they were making open documents
[00:26:04.500]about ordinary life of ordinary people.
[00:26:07.740]And they were focusing on real problems of people,
[00:26:13.460]and were showing them on TV very openly.
[00:26:18.700]So we may see a sample from our program
[00:26:23.190]that was broadcast in April '69.
[00:26:26.280]And this reportage shows
[00:26:31.920]some housing problems in Prague.
[00:28:02.860]So it was showing disappointment of socialist people
[00:28:06.830]like different from the official propaganda.
[00:28:12.020]There is another series, Probes,
[00:28:16.270]only three parts were released.
[00:28:18.620]And it was also focused on some imperfections
[00:28:24.000]of everyday life.
[00:28:26.250]And the series was re-released in 1988
[00:28:31.620]after perestroika was launched in Soviet Union.
[00:28:36.050]And this is also very interesting,
[00:28:39.130]but due to the time we have to skip some samples.
[00:28:46.080]Another series I had mentioned before
[00:28:49.570]is Public Affair.
[00:28:51.630]It was a very special series because
[00:28:54.970]for the first time it was given a chance,
[00:28:58.120]real people in the streets,
[00:29:00.150]to express their opinion on any topic.
[00:29:06.650]So it was really a festival moment for television
[00:29:11.440]because they could freely express on TV.
[00:29:17.470]Even this series had a controversial episode.
[00:29:22.210]In '67 there was an episode about emigration broadcast,
[00:29:28.130]and due to this affair,
[00:29:32.337]the series was stopped for six months.
[00:29:34.820]It was re-released in March '68.
[00:29:41.250]So we have some videos here
[00:29:43.770]we may just play very quickly.
[00:30:24.870]The last series I mentioned,
[00:30:27.040]I mean the current affairs programs,
[00:30:28.753]was the Face to Face series.
[00:30:33.600]There was a given chance to some politicians
[00:30:38.060]or some other personalities of culture, political life,
[00:30:44.030]was given a chance to them to express
[00:30:47.305]their opinions on some topics.
[00:30:53.100]One of the politicians who were
[00:30:55.790]often asked in this series,
[00:30:58.330]there was Ota Sik who was
[00:31:02.813]Vice Prime Minister at the time,
[00:31:05.730]and he was an economist
[00:31:07.670]and was responsible for the new economic model
[00:31:14.104]of the project of liberalization of economy.
[00:31:19.090]So we may just see one sample
[00:31:23.900]of him from March '68.
[00:31:28.960]He was answering some questions from auditorium
[00:31:33.880]from students about socialist economy.
[00:31:52.012](crowd applauding)
[00:33:25.750]So he was quite optimistic, I think.
[00:33:32.040]There is also some other important documentaries,
[00:33:35.958]for example to help the General Prosecutor's Office
[00:33:41.810]which investigated the case of Irma Sarik,
[00:33:50.190]or (mumbles) documentaries.
[00:33:54.280]He was a very significant documentary maker.
[00:34:02.959]As you know there were some events
[00:34:05.400]that stopped all the process,
[00:34:07.530]and the invasion itself occurred
[00:34:15.070]during the night from 20 to 21st August.
[00:34:20.430]In archive we keep some of our materials,
[00:34:24.880]but mostly talem on 16 millimeter film tapes,
[00:34:31.370]and we also keep,
[00:34:34.030]I keep newsreels that were broadcast
[00:34:37.540]in theaters at the time.
[00:34:39.030]So it also contains sound
[00:34:44.000]and it was taken on 35 millimeter movies.
[00:34:47.460]So I will play just a sample from this newsreel.
[00:34:52.916](voice overpowered by video)
[00:36:28.367]So it was quite an emotional commentary.
[00:36:34.970]As I said we also keep some footage
[00:36:40.140]that was made by a television cameraman.
[00:36:47.270]I have to skip it.
[00:36:50.640]And I would say something about the broadcast
[00:36:53.400]during the days of occupation.
[00:36:56.330]Soviet armies focused very soon on Czechoslovak TV
[00:37:04.040]as the main source of information for public.
[00:37:11.170]So they occupy headquarters.
[00:37:14.003]But the TV crew, they tried to move
[00:37:19.020]very quickly from occupied premises to new rooms,
[00:37:25.190]and they kept creating makeshift studios
[00:37:30.200]to continue in broadcast.
[00:37:32.780]So they managed to keep broadcasting
[00:37:39.090]during the whole first seven days of occupation.
[00:37:47.050]We keep in archives also some footage
[00:37:53.910]of Soviet soldiers occupying the headquarters
[00:37:56.710]of Czechoslovak Television, (speaks in foreign language).
[00:38:01.270]It was taken illegally from opposite building.
[00:38:05.639]And we see just some officers in the windows
[00:38:10.610]of the building.
[00:38:24.250]The TV makers kept moving around Prague
[00:38:28.370]and were escaping from the soldiers,
[00:38:31.600]and one of the places was then unfinished
[00:38:35.170]complex of buildings where Czech TV is now located.
[00:38:42.380]They even managed to transport some broadcasts,
[00:38:46.130]they keep them by boat because the bridges
[00:38:49.260]were occupied by soldiers, so they were not able to
[00:38:54.670]transport the equipment from one side to the other side
[00:38:58.020]of Vltava River.
[00:39:00.070]So it was really a huge effort of TV makers
[00:39:04.769]to keep on broadcasting.
[00:39:11.080]So now we have some new footage
[00:39:15.500]from the makeshift studio,
[00:39:19.180]and it takes TV makers at the time,
[00:39:26.670]I think it may be my office now,
[00:39:29.050]the complex of where now Czech TV is located.
[00:39:36.640]And all TV workers had to work undercover,
[00:39:43.930]in disguise.
[00:39:46.410]For example this picture shows
[00:39:49.230]studio where they have some artificial wall behind them
[00:39:54.210]to pretend they broadcast from a cellar.
[00:40:04.258]TV makers managed to smuggle the materials
[00:40:08.767]out of the country, mostly to ORF, Austrian Television.
[00:40:12.630]It was broadcast to the world.
[00:40:16.450]The Soviets didn't manage to keep it in secret,
[00:40:20.380]the whole operation.
[00:40:22.230]I just used the picture.
[00:40:28.030]Mr. Kodalkus, I'm sorry, I didn't get the permission.
[00:40:33.480]So the Soviets were on a rampage
[00:40:37.850]and Brezhnev personally insisted on dismissal
[00:40:40.320]of Jiri Pelikan as Director General
[00:40:43.210]which happened on the 1st of September.
[00:40:54.010]After 27th August of 1968,
[00:41:01.750]the illegal broadcast stopped.
[00:41:04.710]Soviet soldiers locked the Czechoslovak TV premises,
[00:41:07.970]but continuously there were some acts of restoring
[00:41:13.439]the situation before the Prague Spring,
[00:41:18.600]so censorship was restored very quickly,
[00:41:21.700]and as I said Jiri Pelikan was dismissed very quickly.
[00:41:26.650]By the way he managed to emigrate to Italy
[00:41:29.530]and became a politician there
[00:41:31.380]and member of the European parliament,
[00:41:33.370]so he's a very interesting person.
[00:41:39.640]I have just two final clips.
[00:41:44.650]First there is lots of house speech
[00:41:48.894]from April 1969
[00:41:52.270]about his kind of warning
[00:41:55.720]what could happen to the society
[00:41:57.240]if they don't keep the spirit of the Prague Spring.
[00:42:02.987]And the other program I chose from hundreds of programs
[00:42:07.450]that were produced during normalization,
[00:42:11.120]it shows how the expectations
[00:42:16.000]of Baslav Havel became true.
[00:42:21.843]So first, our speech.
[00:44:18.198]And from the propaganda movies
[00:44:20.521]that were produced during the '70s,
[00:44:23.090]so hundreds of programs I chose one.
[00:44:25.790]This was broadcast during summer 1970,
[00:44:28.660]and it shows some friendship that arise
[00:44:33.150]between Soviet soldiers and some peasants
[00:44:36.890]of a small village in Bohemia.
[00:44:39.370]So we'll just see.
[00:46:41.670]So that's the end of my presentation.
[00:46:44.840]I have one more thing to show you,
[00:46:47.540]that we discovered some treasure, hidden treasure,
[00:46:53.100]because our archives
[00:46:58.750]got recently some new footage
[00:47:00.700]from 1968 that was taken by a Catalan businessman
[00:47:06.988]who was at the time in Prague.
[00:47:10.520]He arrived on 25th of August
[00:47:12.570]and he took on 35 millimeter camera
[00:47:15.770]unknown footage,
[00:47:25.260]something that we hadn't seen before.
[00:47:30.236]And it's in color and it's 35 millimeter film.
[00:47:34.430]So this is of extra good quality.
[00:47:38.440]And we transferred this into HD,
[00:47:41.130]so it seems like it was taken yesterday
[00:47:46.060]and now it's very real.
[00:48:20.170]It's mute with no sound, but the footage is amazing.
[00:48:26.330]Okay.
[00:48:32.460]I have transcoded it in lower resolution,
[00:48:35.870]but in HD it's really powerful to see that
[00:48:44.380]So we haven't seen anything like that before.
[00:49:02.847]I think it's nine minutes long.
[00:49:09.800]So just an example.
[00:49:19.666]So thank you.
[00:49:21.455](audience applauding)
[00:49:38.530]Martin, that was fantastic.
[00:49:40.780]I've known Martin now for about, well,
[00:49:43.040]quite a few months we've been working together at a project,
[00:49:46.210]and now you know why I work with him.
[00:49:48.410]He is the best.
[00:49:50.090]And I'm gonna pass this off to the audience
[00:49:53.490]if you'd like to ask questions.
[00:49:55.520]It was absolutely brilliant.
[00:50:04.510]This was just fantastic.
[00:50:06.870]I would like to ask you, now it's obvious
[00:50:09.530]because you were able to create this,
[00:50:11.150]that enormous amount of materials did survive
[00:50:15.220]the Russian invasion.
[00:50:16.530]But can you tell us were materials actually
[00:50:19.640]destroyed from the television materials?
[00:50:34.920]Thank you.
[00:50:36.840]Yeah, most the footage survived actually,
[00:50:42.850]but some footage were,
[00:50:46.740]we have some materials lost
[00:50:50.320]either due to censorship that they were thrown away,
[00:50:54.630]or due to some technical reasons.
[00:50:59.210]For example they were infected by vinegar syndrome
[00:51:03.540]or something like that.
[00:51:05.600]But I think 90% of materials survived.
[00:51:09.810]Yeah, so good.
[00:51:41.580]Thanks.
[00:51:51.780]Sorry, was that question or just remark?
[00:51:53.760]I'm sorry, I didn't get.
[00:51:57.980]Okay, well all right.
[00:51:59.300]Sorry, I just misunderstood.
[00:52:02.940]I think it was how Czechs deal with some issues.
[00:52:10.860]They just tried to walk it, you know?
[00:52:16.210]Even in this series you have seen here,
[00:52:21.720]it's very typical and common that,
[00:52:29.330]Czechs I think they have a problem to take
[00:52:32.800]some issue seriously.
[00:52:40.050]Sometimes the way how to deal with that,
[00:52:45.280]I think, yeah, they may be tradition
[00:52:47.340]of some Czech humor in the movie.
[00:52:51.290]It's not only in full feature movies and dramas,
[00:52:53.870]but also it was influenced,
[00:52:57.570]it was spread to television production.
[00:53:02.950]So this is quite typical for us I think.
[00:53:16.560]Thank you so much for that great presentation,
[00:53:18.900]and it made me curious about
[00:53:21.570]whether you've done research into
[00:53:23.710]what happened after 1968
[00:53:25.420]and the whole process of how television was used
[00:53:28.630]in aid of normalization.
[00:53:30.820]And just one quick remark.
[00:53:33.345]Otta Bednářová ended up in jail herself in the 1980s.
[00:53:38.300]And the only picture I remember of her
[00:53:42.975]is there's someone taking picture of her
[00:53:44.380]looking out of a prison cell into the courtyard.
[00:53:47.760]But my main question is about how television
[00:53:51.040]was used in normalization.
[00:53:53.890]Yeah, of course it became the main tool of propaganda.
[00:53:58.640]And what you have seen here, I mean the last clip
[00:54:05.380]I played here, it's like maybe too much.
[00:54:10.560]The propaganda later was like smoother.
[00:54:15.710]Maybe it wasn't so stupid and dumb,
[00:54:18.830]but still it was quite present there.
[00:54:22.780]And they were creating not only documentaries
[00:54:28.100]and public affair propaganda programs,
[00:54:30.610]but also dramas and whole TV series
[00:54:35.070]that were depicting like the life of officials.
[00:54:42.723]For example they're telling their
[00:54:44.687]own story of the events of 1968.
[00:54:48.170]So, yeah, it was a very important tool
[00:54:54.630]for the communist party till 1989.
[00:55:12.270]You mentioned that,
[00:55:14.830]I think it was one of the kind of series
[00:55:17.780]was kind of relaunched in 1989.
[00:55:21.330]Are there certain continuities
[00:55:23.110]from people in 1968 that kind of come back
[00:55:27.110]or kind of relaunched?
[00:55:28.930]No, actually it was just
[00:55:31.110]the concept of the program.
[00:55:36.620]They used the same title for the series
[00:55:39.200]but it was completely new and it was focused.
[00:55:42.470]It was kind of restrained, critical form
[00:55:45.720]in the late '80s.
[00:55:47.590]So after the Pastorica was released and (mumbles),
[00:55:51.780]so the officials had to allow workers
[00:55:57.180]to create something similar in our TV, so that's why.
[00:56:01.950]But it had nothing in common with the previous series
[00:56:05.900]from the 1960s.
[00:56:08.120]Did any of the people return
[00:56:09.530]that maybe had to leave in '68?
[00:56:11.900]Did any of them return to TV in the Czech Republic
[00:56:14.680]after '89?
[00:56:15.990]You mean?
[00:56:17.356]I don't know, journalists, TV producers,
[00:56:20.190]or people who had to leave.
[00:56:21.280]Yeah, after 1989 you mean?
[00:56:23.010]Yeah, of course.
[00:56:24.680]Even one of the first director generals
[00:56:28.050]of Czechoslovak TV was one of the documentarists
[00:56:32.550]who were fired, was fired, during the produce (mumbles).
[00:56:40.630]Thank you for a fascinating presentation,
[00:56:42.650]and my question is about the vault
[00:56:45.160]film treasure room.
[00:56:46.550]How extensive the vault was
[00:56:49.000]and how did it work and in what way
[00:56:52.540]things were sort of archive kept,
[00:56:54.540]how much was lost because maybe of the storing condition?
[00:56:57.280]Or just how extensive treasure the vault was?
[00:57:01.990]How extensive?
[00:57:03.710]Treasure, film treasure room.
[00:57:05.678](speaking in foreign language)
[00:57:09.177]Okay.
[00:57:17.240]It wasn't separated from the collection,
[00:57:20.220]but it was in the film library,
[00:57:24.200]it was stored in the film library physically.
[00:57:26.400]But it wasn't locked or something like that.
[00:57:32.720]But the censorship, after 1968, was not official.
[00:57:37.740]So the creators guaranteed themselves
[00:57:45.233]that they would use it,
[00:57:47.490]they would broadcast it.
[00:57:51.499]It wasn't necessary to just
[00:57:55.560]lock it down or something.
[00:57:58.965]There was kind of auto-censorship I would say.
[00:58:02.250]No, I mean for example
[00:58:04.330]from some Czech New Wave, they were hardly,
[00:58:07.160]sort of remastered.
[00:58:09.120]So if you know maybe about the procedures,
[00:58:11.290]if there was some secret coding.
[00:58:13.080]You know this could not be shown,
[00:58:15.570]or some sort of labeling system.
[00:58:18.290]You know, if you know a little bit.
[00:58:19.520]But I know it's complicated.
[00:58:21.205]Yeah, I wasn't allowed to get access
[00:58:24.160]to it to anyone.
[00:58:39.100]I must say in a funny way,
[00:58:40.590]scrap some kind of positive feature
[00:58:42.550]to this terrible Czech television
[00:58:45.660]in the normalization times.
[00:58:48.140]Like many of you sitting in this room,
[00:58:50.720]I've lived through all this period.
[00:58:52.320]And in the '50s where the TV started transmitting,
[00:58:57.480]my father would not allow to have
[00:59:00.890]this devil's machine at home at all.
[00:59:03.866]And at around '60 I think
[00:59:06.290]we bought one home.
[00:59:08.170]And it would stand in the room about three weeks,
[00:59:13.330]and then he literally thrown it out of the window.
[00:59:19.410]So I think it has a very positive effect
[00:59:21.730]with me and my brother that we went back to
[00:59:24.750]serious literature,
[00:59:26.710]studying languages, you know,
[00:59:28.280]listening to music, reading poetry.
[00:59:33.550]Who would dare to do so today?
[00:59:36.890]So I would bow and say thank you
[00:59:39.970]that the Czech Television that we had
[00:59:42.380]devoted out precious time to serious things.
[00:59:48.734](applauding)
[00:59:53.530]That being said I'm interested
[00:59:55.320]given how closely you have looked at
[00:59:58.710]that sort of transitional moment, right,
[01:00:00.960]from before early '68,
[01:00:03.690]through '68 and then after.
[01:00:07.484]You've called our attention to changing content.
[01:00:10.434]What became available to do,
[01:00:13.700]like topics that could be raised and so forth.
[01:00:16.160]Did you also notice any sort of change in style
[01:00:19.960]no matter how terrible perhaps the television
[01:00:22.270]overall was but like whether
[01:00:24.120]people responsible for making these films
[01:00:27.330]doing something slightly different
[01:00:29.000]in terms of the aesthetics of television
[01:00:31.170]or the aesthetics of story telling
[01:00:33.210]or what you say was the same style itself
[01:00:37.020]and it was just a different content.
[01:00:38.970]I think it was developing, actually.
[01:00:41.780]The style they kept improving
[01:00:45.580]since the beginning of 1960s.
[01:00:50.200]The more room they were given, the more
[01:00:57.820]perfect they were in not only in content
[01:01:01.090]but also in form.
[01:01:02.370]I think it was both together.
[01:01:17.900]There we plays by Batala Pavel
[01:01:22.200]and Schschild Puton in the (speaks in foreign language).
[01:01:27.840]Were television crews admitted to,
[01:01:32.030]it was maybe around '63 and even
[01:01:35.670]one of them was on still in '69,
[01:01:38.810]once the television crew admitted to film
[01:01:42.490]some of these performances,
[01:01:45.070]was that not within your interest?
[01:01:50.070]Frankly, I don't know this exactly.
[01:01:54.646]In '63 we may have some,
[01:01:59.870]not whole program, but I think we may have
[01:02:03.560]some news reportage from that time.
[01:02:10.080]I think so but I'm not so sure.
[01:02:17.042]I think so.
[01:02:18.510]I would have to have closer look
[01:02:22.770]to reply properly, sorry.
[01:02:27.230]Thanks for everything else you showed us.
[01:02:30.350]Thank you.
[01:02:35.306]One more question and then we have to
[01:02:36.685]break for lunch soon.
[01:02:37.805]Okay, let me get this to you.
[01:02:41.296]Let me pass it.
[01:02:42.741]Just real quick.
[01:02:44.216]We heard a lot about censorship
[01:02:45.890]during the period of normalization.
[01:02:48.280]Now, is there censorship at any time,
[01:02:51.840]for example, news broadcasting,
[01:02:54.016](indistinct question).
[01:02:57.740]Right now?
[01:03:00.265]No.
[01:03:01.870]No, we have no such thing.
[01:03:03.810]But of course there are some attempts
[01:03:05.350]to influence our broadcast from politicians.
[01:03:08.100]It would be always here.
[01:03:10.330]So now it's getting stronger I think
[01:03:15.336]from the people around the president,
[01:03:16.810]and of course maybe around prime ministers,
[01:03:19.590]so it could be tough for us.
[01:03:22.290]But so far so good, yeah.
[01:03:26.530]I have a question about
[01:03:28.660]the Russian language during the communism
[01:03:31.210]on Czechoslovak TV.
[01:03:34.074]There were some programs in Russian.
[01:03:37.106]Was English also present in the Czechoslovak TV?
[01:03:42.245]Some courses.
[01:03:46.074]Air courses or reportages from Russia
[01:03:50.784]or from the Soviet Union. Yeah, of course.
[01:03:53.510]Yeah there were some but of course
[01:03:56.240]there were much more from
[01:04:01.160]Soviet Union than from the US or Western.
[01:04:03.690]But also it wasn't like the Western work
[01:04:08.400]wasn't ignored totally so.
[01:04:10.650]There were some documentaries,
[01:04:14.620]even from the US, yeah that's right.
[01:04:16.750]But it was like kind of propaganda.
[01:04:19.760]So they were showing the dark side
[01:04:21.530]of the society and so on,
[01:04:24.770]like the beating of the African-Americans and so on,
[01:04:28.290]so yeah, it was kind of cliche.

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Martin Bouda speaks at Prague Spring 50

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