Burning Bush - The Heroes of Prague

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Movie
German title Burning Bush - The Heroes of Prague
Original title Hořící keř
Country of production Czech Republic
original language Czech
Publishing year 2013
length 78, 72 and 78 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Agnieszka Holland
script Štěpán Hulík
production Jan Bílek ,
Tomáš Hrubý ,
Pavla Kubeckova ,
Tereza Polachova ,
Antony Root
music Antoni Łazarkiewicz
camera Martin Štrba ,
Rafal Paradowski
cut Pavel Hrdlička
occupation

Burning Bush - The Heroes of Prague (original title: Hořící keř ) is a Czech miniseries by the Polish director Agnieszka Holland from 2013. In three episodes, it tells of the consequences and aftermath of the public self-immolation of the student and demonstrator Jan Palach after the crackdown on the Prague Spring . The HBO production is based on real events.

action

In protest against the crackdown on the democratic movement of the Prague Spring and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact military , the student Jan Palach burned himself as a "living torch" in January 1969 on a central square in Prague. Police major Jireš immediately tried to identify possible confidants and other planned self-immolations, but could not find any reliable information. Jan Plach dies a few days later from severe burns. His brother and especially his mother are affected.

At a party event, the Czechoslovak MP Vilém Nový spoke about Jan Palach and made false claims to question the real motives for his act. Jan Palach's mother, together with the student leader Ondřej Trávníček, hired the lawyer Dagmar Burešová to sue Nový for defamation. The young lawyer begins to research together with her assistant Pavel and files the lawsuit. Your work is hindered again and again as evidence disappears, witnesses do not appear and the press is effectively excluded from the negotiations. Burešová's husband, the doctor Radim Bureš, is also pressured with false accusations and eventually has to change his job. At the end of the trial, the judge is given the verdict by the secret service. It reads that the charges will be dismissed.

The film ends with leaflets with the photo of Jan Palach being distributed during protests in Prague in 1989 .

background

Burning Bush was produced for HBO Europe and also contains short clips of original black and white footage. Originally planned as a three-part series, a single film was cut from it and submitted as the Czech entry for the best foreign language film at the 2014 Academy Awards . The contribution was rejected because Burning Bush was already shown on television.

Burning Bush was first shown on German-language television as a three-part mini-series from March 27, 2014 on arte , later also in a different cut version as a two-part on ORF one .

The real lawyer Dagmar Burešová defended not only Jan Palach's mother but also other opponents of the communist government of the time. She later became Techoslovakia's first female justice minister after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

reception

The mini-series received mostly positive reviews, and the authenticity and attention to detail were often positively highlighted. Prisma writes that director Agnieszka Holland captures “the human side of the events of that time in great detail and excellently” and justifies this with the fact that the director experienced the Prague Spring as a contemporary witness in Prague. Lena Bopp from FAZ praises the differentiated portrayal of the characters in dealing with the occupation of the country. For her, "the film makes it clear which options people had, that between internal emigration, resistance and flight, no life was possible that could be described as normal by our standards." On Zeitgeschichte-online , history professor Martina Winkler describes that each of the three parts aptly portrays a further step in the change in political and private life in the period after the crackdown on the Prague Spring: from pride to speechlessness to helplessness in the face of state organs. In their opinion, the film adaptation delivers "an, if not necessarily always original, yet appealing and largely convincing dramatization and interpretation" of this "key moment [...] in Czech history".

Burning Bush received an average of 8.0 / 10 points from viewers in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) .

Awards

Burning Bush was nominated in 16 categories at the Czech film prize Český lev 2013 and won 13 of them, including for the best film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Czech lawyer and civil rights activist Burešová died. ORF.at, July 2, 2018, accessed on January 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Burning Bush - The Heroes of Prague. In: prisma . January 29, 2013, accessed January 26, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Lena Bopp: Arte series "Burning Bush". Internal emigration, resistance or flight. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 27, 2014, accessed January 26, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Martina Winkler: Burning Bush - The Heroes of Prague. HBO is filming a central moment of memory in Czech history. In: Contemporary history online . March 2014, accessed January 26, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Burning Bush. In: IMDb. Retrieved January 26, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Czech Lion Awards / 2013 / Film nominations. Česká filmová a televizní akademie, accessed on January 26, 2019 (English).