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Twenty-One Spokespersons of Charter ´77
21 mluvčích Charty 77
Olga Sommerová / Czech Republic / 2010 / 56 min.
At a time when Czechoslovakia was controlled by the Communist Party under the eye of the Soviet Union, the Charter 77 initiative represented the civic opposition that the situation required. It was composed of an intellectual elite of academics, artists, former Communist Party members, religious believers, agnostics, Marxists, and Trotskyites. Olga Sommerová's documentary triptych looks at the spokespeople for the Charter, from its inception to the end of its activities in 1992. Their task was to publish topical declarations and documents. Sommerová shows how the events of the Prague Spring, the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent show-trial of The Plastic People of the Universe rock group led to the creation of a dissident movement that was recognised both at home and abroad. Although the government never ceased monitoring, interrogating and imprisoning the Charter's signatures, video records and declarations such as A Few Sentences (Několik vět) continued to be produced, urging the citizens of Czechoslovakia to resist the regime.
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