A special screening of two Slovak documentary films depicting 1988-1989 events in Slovakia. US premiere.
Part Two of the ongoing Forget or Forgive? series of documentary films, recounting the dark periods in Czech and Slovak history under communism, and discussions about facing collective memory.
Moderated by Gabriel Levicky
Monday, October 27 at 6:30pm
Bohemian National Hall, 3rd Floor
321 E 73 St
New York City
RSVP: newyork@svu2000.org
Suggested donation 5.00
Program
November +20, dir Tomas Vitek, 2009, 26 minutes
The film presents a documentary view of the pre-November, November, and post-November events in 1989, which impacted the development of Slovakia’s society. With Ján Budaj, Ján Čarnogurský, Michal Hvorecký, Milan Kňažko, František Mikloško, Ladislav Snopko, Peter Šťastný, Magda Vášáryová.
Candle Demonstration (SvieÄková Manifestacia ), dir Ondrej Krajnak, 2008, 26 minutes
A peaceful demonstration for religious freedom in 1988 at the Hviezdoslav Square in Bratislava brutally suppressed by the police and thesecret service. The film includes recordings by the State Security´s secret camera. Secret police agents are identified. Interviews with the protagonists of this historic demonstration recorded twenty years later include Peter Bohunický, Ján Čarnogurský and Ľudmila Heribanová.
Films are produced by the Nation’s Memory Institute in Slovakia. In Slovak with English subtitles.
Gabriel Ariel Levicky, writer, translator, poet and cartoonist, was born in Slovakia. In August 1968, he participated in the anti-Soviet invasion protests in Bratislava and left the country soon after for Israel. After returning to Czechoslovakia a year later, he was involved in the underground movement and became the subject of secret police harassment, especially after signing Charter 77. In 1979 he left Czechoslovakia again, first to San Francisco and then to New York City.
The Nation’s Memory Institute / Ústav pamäti národa (ÚPN) is a public organization founded in 2002 by the Slovak Parliament for the purpose of investigation, analysis and disclosure of documents from the dark period of Slovak fascism to Soviet style communism in Slovakia 1939-1989. ÚPN holds a vast reference archive open to public scrutiny.
Organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in New York (SVU-NY).
In cooperation with the Nation’s Memory Institute (Ústav pamäti naroda) in Bratislava and the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic.
