Political Docu-drama 1989 Will be Presented at Forum 2000

This year's edition of the Forum 2000 conference will host project KineDok within its program, screening a documentary film 1989, dealing with the events preceding the fall of the iron curtain. The film will be followed by a discussion with its Danish director Anders Østergaard, nominated for the Academy Award for his previous film Burma VJ.

The documentary "1989" (with English subtitles) will be screened on Tuesday, September 15 from 3:45 p.m. in the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague (Jungmannovo nám. 18, Prague 1). It deals with the events of the significant summer in Hungary, which became a harbinger of the fall of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The film's protagonist is a former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh, who as a part of the financial cuts decided to tear down the costly electrified fence at the Hungarian-Austrian border in May 1989 and thus opened the way to the West. A newly open border with Austria was crossed by thousands of East Germans, which made not only the members of Nemeth's own party, but also leaders of other Eastern bloc countries greatly alarmed. The border conrol was therefore strengthened once again and the backstage political machinations had a fatal influence on a young family of East Germans, whose father was shot by the border guards. Their story forms the main storyline of the film.

"Was it an exceptional tragedy? Was it just an accident or rather a result of the powerplay processes on the background? We wondered whether this case could be related to the former Hungarian Prime Minister. We search for him with an intention to ask, but did not plan to pull that out immediately. When we found Miklós Németh with the camera, he came out with this case by himself," said the screenwriter Erzsébet Rácz to the Slovakian newspaper Denník N.

Five countries participate in the pilot edition of this international project, screening exceptional creative documentaries and organizing debates with the filmmakers at alternative venues: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Romania. In Romania alone, KineDok will have more than 200 screenings in 14 cities until the end of 2015. The idea of the project organized by Institute of Documentary Film is to overcome the walls of the traditional cinema halls and bring the shared experience of watching a movie on the big screen and discussing the topic with its filmmakers closer to the audience: to more towns and cities and to such places as clubs, cafés, former train stations, factory halls or even a chapel. KineDok was already presented at the 50th Karlovy Vary IFF with a screening of Daniel's World, providing an insight into the life of a young man with a paedophile orientation. In KineDok's collection, there is also an Oscar/nominated and multi-award winning documentary by Aneta Kopacz, Joanna, based on a blog of a dying mother, who tries to leave a valuable legacy to her small son. Another acclaimed documentary on KineDok's programme is the Russian documentary Blood. Its director, Alina Rudnitskaya, managed to point out the dismal state of the country, whose unemployed residents often take blood donation for the main source of income, with a surprising amount of humor through the tragicomic situations. She was also present at the recent screenings in Praha, Plzeň and Zákolany, where she talked about the difficult situation of critical documentaries in Russia among others.

In Czech Republic, it is currently possible to attend KineDok screenings for example in Ostrava (creavtive centre Provoz Hlubina in an old mine), in the cultural centre in the cloister chapel in Napajedla, Plzeň (Papírna) and other alternative places in Olomouc, České Budějovice, Hradec Králové, Liberec, Havlíčkův Brod and Praha. The complete list of the films, places and screenings can be found here.