The inaugural opening of the 2nd edition of the Visegrad Four film series: Banned! by Communist Governments:

09 kwietnia, 2013

Films They Didn’t Want You To See, took place at the Polish Embassy on April 4th, 2013. The Visegrad Group, also known as the Visegrad Four ( V4) created in 1991, consists of four Central European countries – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

In 2012, during the 1st edition of V4 film series Humor as Resistance: Life Behind the Iron Curtain each of the V4 Embassies is presenting a film that was banned from being showcased in each country during the Communist era. The films were finally released publicly following the collapse of Communism after the 1989 Revolutions, which began in Poland with the Solidarity movement and continued in Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia and other Central and Eastern European countries.All of these countries share similar cultural and intellectual values, have common roots, which wish to preserve and continue to strengthen through the V4 group\'s activities.

The Polish Embassy presented Interrogation by Ryszard Bugajski - one of the most famous Polish films of the 1980s, which was hailed by critics as “arguably the strongest work on the Stalinist past ever made in Central Europe”. Set in early 1950s Poland, the film is built around the sharp opposition between the oppressive Stalinist system and its innocent victims, graphically showing the horror and brutality of the times. Its story deals with the imprisonment and torture of an innocent young woman, Tonia Dziwisz, played by Krystyna Janda.

The message of the film was incompatible with the political ideology of the communist authorities during the 1980s. Therefore the film was immediately banned and shelved, and a decision was reached to destroy the 35 mm copy and dissolve the production film studio X Unit. Interrogation (1982) was seen by viewers in Poland on illegal video copies until its official public release in 1989, just a few months after Poland’s political transformation.

Now, twenty four years later, Interrogation remains a profoundly powerful film, receiving emotional acclaim, particularly from those members of American audiences who are seeing it for the first time, as evidenced by last night’s overwhelmingly poignant response.

The 2nd edition of V4 film series: Banned! by Communist Governments: Films They Didn’t Want You To See will run through April 25th, 2013 at the Hungardian, Slovak and Czech Embassies. To see the schedule

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