daily tiger
42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam #9 Friday 1 February 2013 ZOZ voor Nederlandse editie
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Attending the Q&A after the premiere of Burning Bush, HBO executive producer Tereza Polachová, screenwriter Štepán Hulík, producer Pavla Kubeckova and actor Emma Smetana
photo: Bram Belloni
Trial by fire Directed by Agnieszka Holland, Burning Bush explores an iconic moment in recent Czech history. By Geoffrey Macnab
In January 1969, Jan Palach, an idealistic Czech student, set fire to himself in Wenceslas Square in Prague. He died of his burns four days later. His suicide was a symbolic gesture – an act of defiance against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous summer and against the way that political and social life had become paralysed in its wake. Palach’s suicide is the starting point for Burning Bush, a major new series from HBO Europe that is receiving its international premiere here in Rotterdam. Formative experience
The series is directed by Agnieszka Holland, the Polish director who has worked on such HBO US series as The Wire and Treme and on such celebrated European films as A Lonely Woman and Europa, Europa. It is scripted by newcomer, Štepán Hulík. Holland was a student in Prague during the heady days of the Prague Spring in 1968. The director still describes this as a key formative experience in her life.
She had left Czechoslovakia for the winter holidays and so wasn’t in the country at the time of Palach’s self-immolation. She eventually arrived back in Prague just after his funeral and was “very much involved in everything that happened later. It was something which formed me for the future”, Holland says of her time in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. “It was an incredible gift that I was able to come back to this.” She was therefore receptive when Hulík and his producer partners turned up at her door in Poland to pitch their project. (She does acknowledge her surprise at how young they were.) Spirit
Hulík’s first screenplay was written on spec when he was about to graduate from FAMU, the film school in Prague. Two fellow students, would-be producers called Tomas Hruby and Pavla Kubeckova, helped Hulík develop the project further. “We were sitting in some pub in Prague and we were thinking about which director would be able to do it,” Hulík recalls. The trio went through a list, starting with Czech directors but didn’t think anyone was quite right. Eventually, they thought of Holland. When the Polish director read the screenplay, she was immediately struck by how “true” it was to the spirit of the time.
of the events he has dramatized. “It is about how we shouldn’t be apathetic to the things that are happening around us. Sometimes, we have to sacrifice something to make things better.” When the young writer began to research the story of Jan Palach, he was fascinated by Dagmar Buresová, the young female lawyer who defended Palach’s family. “The most difficult thing was to get behind the symbol [of Palach] and find what was human … I was trying to do it for two or three years, but couldn’t find the right point of view. But then I discovered this story of a trial that started after Jan’s death, when Jan’s mother was suing this member of parliament for slander.” Liberties
Dagmar (played by Slovakian actress Tatiana Pauhofová) showed huge heroism in even taking on the case, in the face of the Soviet occupiers. “I was reading the article and I was saying to myself, this is the real story. I see her as a real follower of Jan Palach.” Hulík insists that his screenplay is very firmly rooted in fact. “I was trying to take all the liberties I could but finally I realised that even more than 80 per cent of the
Sacrifice
Burning Bush
Hulík and his collaborators may still be in their twenties, but their recreation of late 60s Prague has been widely praised by those who lived through the Prague Spring. (Celebrated Czech New Wave auteur Jirí Menzel, director of Closely Observed Trains, recently called Hulík to congratulate him on the show’s accuracy.) “I see it as a very contemporary story”, Hulík says
INTERNATIONAL film festival rotterdam
Burning Bush
script is really based on fact and is really truthful.” He worked closely with a Czech historian and had access to archival material from the police and courts. It helped, too, that even as he was working on his screenplay, Hulík was preparing a book about the late 60s in Czechoslovakia. “Because of this book, I met a lot of people who had lived in that period. I was asking them about their experiences and memories.” Complex
No, his parents weren’t directly involved in the political uprising around the Prague Spring. “They love the film, but I have to say I am a proletarian child. My mother is a nurse, my father is a locksmith … they were just trying to live their lives. They weren’t politically exposed.” The screenplay was originally written as a 90-minute feature. Holland was delighted to be able to expand it and make it as a TV series. “I thought the story is so complex it needs the time to be told”, the Polish director states. Czech TV originally refused to back Burning Bush. Then HBO came in. The irony is obvious. The big American major was far more receptive to this intensely Czech story than local funders. The series started its broadcast last Sunday. To Hulík’s surprise, Burning Bush appears to have struck a chord with younger as well as with older audiences. Facebook and Twitter are buzzing with debates about the film. Meanwhile, the relatives of the characters depicted in the drama have also voiced their approval. Jan Palach’s brother gave the project his blessing. Here is Rotterdam, Palach’s niece watched the movie. “At the end, she was crying and she told us she was really moved”, Hulík notes. Burning Bush screens tomorrow at 9.45 a.m. in Cinerama 5.