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A TRIAL IN PRAGUE
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United States
2000 / Video / Color-B&W; / 83 min.
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PROC�S � PRAGUE
In 1952, at the height of the Cold War, an infamous political show trial took place in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Fourteen leading Communists, including Rudolf Slansky, the second most powerful man in the country, were tried on charges of high treason and espionage. Although they were innocent of these charges, they confessed and were convicted. Most of the men were hanged and three received life sentences. Eleven of the fourteen were Jews. This film tells the story of the trial and the paranoia of the period through testimonies, trial footage, archival films and extensive documentation. Among the people who were interviewed for the film are Lise London, who late husband Artur (released from prison in 1956) wrote about the trial in a widely published memoir The Confession (which Costa-Gavras adapted to the screen), Eduard Goldstucker, a Kafka scholar and first Czech ambassador to Israel, who was forced to testify at the trial, and Jan Kavan, the current Czech Foreign Minister, whose father, also a trial witness, died shortly after his release from prison. What led these men to their passionate belief in Communism and why did they publicly confess to crimes they did not commit? The film explores these questions, as well as the role of Moscow, the motives for the trial and its anti-Semitic thrust. It deals with the personal stories of the condemned men and the legacy they left their children.
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Script: Zuzana Justman.
Phot.: Miro Gabor, Marek Jicha.
Ed.: David Charap.
Mus.: Peter Fish.
Prod.: Zuzana Justman, Jiri Jezek, Zuzana Cervenkova, David Charap, Pick Productions, 262 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024 (�tats-Unis), t�l.: (212) 580-0242, fax: (212) 362-8443..
Sales: Jane Balfour Films, Burghley House, 35 Fortess Rd., Londres NW5 1AD (Royaume-Uni), t�l.: (44-207) 267 5392, fax: (44-207) 267 4241.
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Zuzana Justman
A graduate of Vassar College and Columbia University in Russian and Slavic studies, Zuzana Justman worked as a writer and translator before making her filmmaking debut in 1989 as producer and screenwriter of TEREZIN DIARY, a documentary about the World War II concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where she was incarcerated for two years. In 1993 she wrote, produced and directed CZECH WOMEN: NOW WE ARE FREE and she received an Emmy Award last year for VOICES OF THE CHILDREN, a documentary about three concentration camp survivors. |
