The Search

The Search is a 1948 American film directed by Fred Zinnemann that tells the story of a young Auschwitz survivor and his mother who search for each other across post-World War II Europe. It stars Montgomery Clift, Ivan Jandl, Jarmila Novotná and Aline MacMahon.

Many scenes were shot amidst the actual ruins of the postwar German cities Ingolstadt, Munich, Nuremberg and Würzburg.[2] Filming took place between June and November 1947, first on location in Germany and then at a studio in Zurich, Switzerland for interior scenes. Although released in the United States in March 1948, the film was not released in Britain until May 1950. Its European premiere was held at the Empire, Leicester Square in London on November 2, 1949 in aid of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with Queen Mary in attendance.

Jandl's performance was recognized with a special juvenile Academy Award. However, the communist government of Czechoslovakia would not permit Jandl to travel to the United States to collect the Oscar and a Golden Globe award that he had also won. Zinnemann accepted the Oscar on Jandl's behalf and the awards were delivered to Jandl in Prague.

·        Montgomery Clift as Ralph "Steve" Stevenson

·        Aline MacMahon as Mrs. Murray

·        Jarmila Novotná as Mrs. Hanna Malik

·        Wendell Corey as Jerry Fisher

·        Ivan Jandl as Karel Malik / "Jim"

·        Mary Patton as Mrs. Fisher

·        Ewart G. Morrison as Mr. Crookes

·        William Rogers as Tom Fisher

·        Leopold Borkowski as Joel Markowsky

·        Claude Gambier as Raoul Dubois

·        Avigdor (Victor) Murik, as the children's teacher in the Jewish Orphans Scene

Source: Wikipedia

It’s the most amazing story you never heard. In the chaos of World War I, tens of thousands of Czech and Slovak POWs switched sides to become an army fighting for the Allies: the Czechoslovak Legion. Suddenly, caught up in the Russian Revolution, they had to fight their way across Siberia, capturing the Trans-Siberian railway, half the Czar’s gold, and the heart of a new nation. Almost erased from history by 50 years of communism, this incredible story lives again in the film Accidental Army: The Amazing True Story of the Czechoslovak Legion.

Good links to try:

http://www.czechlegion.com/TheCzechLegion/TimeLine.html

The following is from the excellent website TresBohemes.com :

by Kytka Jezek

“The Czechoslovak Legion (Československé legie in Czech, Československé légie in Slovak) were volunteer armed forces composed predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting together with the Entente powers during World War I.

Their goal was to win the Allies’ support for the independence of Bohemia and Moravia from the Austrian Empire and of Slovak territories of the Kingdom of Hungary, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. …

… Watch, learn, understand and then question why so many historic occurrences remain suppressed or “overlooked”. A fantastic film.”

"For further reading:

Temple Community Historic Treasures Visual Art Exhibit

JOIN US FOR OUR OPENING NIGHT EVENT 4:30 - 6 PM FRIDAY, MAY 20

AWARD-WINNING TEXAS PARKS & WGILDLIFE MAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPHER EARL NOTTINGHAM WILL BE OUR SPECIAL GUEST!

May is National Preservation Month and every year the Czech Heritage Museum & Genealogy Center, the Temple Railroad & Heritage Museum and the Bell County Museum hosts the Temple Community Historic Treasures Visual Art Exhibit of contest entries and winners.

We are offering this film again this month because the April event was disrupted by the severe April 12 tornadoes.

We are offering this film again this month because the April event was disrupted by the severe April 12 tornadoes.

This delightful movie was filmed in the Czech Republic at Karlovy Vary, the famous spa town. It is said that in the 1300s, Holy Roman Emperor, Bohemian Kng Charles IV, was injured while hunting nearby and was healed at the natural hot springs there. The film features the historic Grandhotel Pupp (Pupp.cz/Eng) founded by Georg Pupp in 1701. This family name was recently recovered from the communist era name of Grandhotel Moscow. Becherovka, a medicinal digestive liqueur, was developed there by a local physician. Many U.S. liquor stores carry it. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival held there is one of the oldest in the world.

Plot: The discovery that she has a terminal illness prompts introverted saleswoman Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) to reflect on what she realizes has been an overly cautious life. So Georgia withdraws her life savings and jets off to Europe where she lives like a millionaire.

This delightful movie was filmed in the Czech Republic at Karlovy Vary, the famous spa town. It is said that in the 1300s, Holy Roman Emperor, Bohemian Kng Charles IV, was injured while hunting nearby and was healed at the natural hot springs there. The film features the historic Grandhotel Pupp (Pupp.cz/Eng) founded by Georg Pupp in 1701. This family name was recently recovered from the communist era name of Grandhotel Moscow. Becherovka, a medicinal digestive liqueur, was developed there by a local physician. Many U.S. liquor stores carry it. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival held there is one of the oldest in the world.

Plot: The discovery that she has a terminal illness prompts introverted saleswoman Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) to reflect on what she realizes has been an overly cautious life. So Georgia withdraws her life savings and jets off to Europe where she lives like a millionaire.

A magical grandfather grants the children three wishes. Two are wasted and only one is left. How will the third wish be spent? A new fairy tale for Christmas which premiered in 2017.

A magical grandfather grants the children three wishes. Two are wasted and only one is left. How will the third wish be spent? A new fairy tale for Christmas which premiered in 2017.

My Antonia (1995)

Starring: Elina Löwensohn, Neil Patrick Harris, Eva Marie Saint, Jason Robards, and Czech actor Jan Triska, one of the original signers of Charter 77.

My Antonia is based on the 1918 novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. It is the third book of her “prairie trilogy” that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. Cather wrote about the struggles of pioneer families on the Great Plains. My Antonia is about a Czech family who moves to America and settle in Nebraska. The book, considered her best work, is patterned after the life of Cather’s life-long close friend, Anna Pavelka. It was written within the lifetime of it’s hero and has been considered to be very accurate to the way people of the prairie lived The story is similar in many ways to stories of the Czech immigrants to Texas at that time. As a result of stories such as this one, mutual aid fraternal societies flourished. (English audio. PG)

Anna Pavelka’s grandchildren talk about her in these interviews produced by the National Willa Cather Center in Nebraska.

About Czech Actor Jan Triska

Tříska emigrated in 1977 after signing a human rights manifesto inspired by his close friend, dissident playwright Václav Havel. He settled in Los Angeles and appeared in dozens of movies, including Ragtime, The Karate Kid Part III and The People vs Larry Flynt, which was directed by his fellow Czech Miloš Forman. Tříska also appeared on television, in series such as Quantum Leap and Highlander: The Series, and on stage, starring as the Devil in a New York Public Theater adaptation of The Master and Margarita. Tříska’s films were banned from Czechoslovakian cinemas and TV screens until the fall of communism in 1989.

After the anti-communist Velvet Revolution led by Havel, Tříska regularly returned home to appear in stage productions and films, including taking a lead role in 1991 comedy The Elementary School, which was nominated for an Academy Award. (The Guardian.com)

My Antonia (1995)

Starring: Elina Löwensohn, Neil Patrick Harris, Eva Marie Saint, Jason Robards, and Czech actor Jan Triska, one of the original signers of Charter 77.

My Antonia is based on the 1918 novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. It is the third book of her “prairie trilogy” that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. Cather wrote about the struggles of pioneer families on the Great Plains. My Antonia is about a Czech family who moves to America and settle in Nebraska. The book, considered her best work, is patterned after the life of Cather’s life-long close friend, Anna Pavelka. It was written within the lifetime of it’s hero and has been considered to be very accurate to the way people of the prairie lived The story is similar in many ways to stories of the Czech immigrants to Texas at that time. As a result of stories such as this one, mutual aid fraternal societies flourished. (English audio. PG)

Anna Pavelka’s grandchildren talk about her in these interviews produced by the National Willa Cather Center in Nebraska.

About Czech Actor Jan Triska

Tříska emigrated in 1977 after signing a human rights manifesto inspired by his close friend, dissident playwright Václav Havel. He settled in Los Angeles and appeared in dozens of movies, including Ragtime, The Karate Kid Part III and The People vs Larry Flynt, which was directed by his fellow Czech Miloš Forman. Tříska also appeared on television, in series such as Quantum Leap and Highlander: The Series, and on stage, starring as the Devil in a New York Public Theater adaptation of The Master and Margarita. Tříska’s films were banned from Czechoslovakian cinemas and TV screens until the fall of communism in 1989.

After the anti-communist Velvet Revolution led by Havel, Tříska regularly returned home to appear in stage productions and films, including taking a lead role in 1991 comedy The Elementary School, which was nominated for an Academy Award. (The Guardian.com)

“A Paul Fierlinger Film Fest.” A delightful look at the adult and children’s animated films of Paul Fierlinger, a Czech who escaped Czechoslovakia and made his career in the U.S. including work with PBS and Sesame Street. (English audio with occasional Czech audio.)

“A Paul Fierlinger Film Fest.” A delightful look at the adult and children’s animated films of Paul Fierlinger, a Czech who escaped Czechoslovakia and made his career in the U.S. including work with PBS and Sesame Street. (English audio with occasional Czech audio.)

“Beyond the Wall” is a documentary that looks at how the abrupt political changes of the 1980s affected Central Europeans. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War and spurred on the peaceful revolutions that caused Communism to crumble.

Using period film footage and on-camera interviews, film makers Rob Dennis and Mark Byne uncover the complexities of living under totalitarian rule.

Featuring dissidents, artists, escape organizers and ordinary people in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, ‘Beyond the Wall” humanizes life under Communism and highlights the complex issues that still face the region.

“The stories of living in a totalitarian country are often complicated and dichotomic,” said Susan Chandler, director of the Czech Heritage Museum in Temple.

“People had their basic needs met - housing, a job, food, healthcare, vacations. One could live a decent life if they did not think too hard about it. Which made it most difficult for artists, scientists, philosophers and anthropologists. Art was heavily censured. Science was sacrificed to popular doctrines. Free thinking was criminal – people were jailed for it. The activities of outside cultures were debunked. Travel was strictly regulated.

“Free education was provided to some but could be easily denied. If your grandparents had been a bit middle class under the free democracy period, by owning a few acres and farming it, or if your third cousin had left during the Prague Spring in 1968, that could disqualify even a devout communist from a college education, even in 1988, regardless of excellent test scores and school records.

“It was dangerous to question the obviously absurd ideologies, systems and regulations, so people found ways to survive, psychologically. Therefore young Czech artists such as Vaclav Havel wrote in the genre of the theater of the absurd. It was the actual matrix in which they were living. These works were smuggled out to the West, which eventually brought help,” Chandler said.

“From what our European visitors to the Museum have been telling me the last few years, knowledge is once more in jeopardy. They tell me that people are forgetting – or never knew – how things were under communism,” said Chandler.

For more on this topic, visit this interview of John Bok with Radio Prague

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/one-on-one/john-bok-former-dissident-still-driven-by-anti-establishment-zeal

“Beyond the Wall” is a documentary that looks at how the abrupt political changes of the 1980s affected Central Europeans. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War and spurred on the peaceful revolutions that caused Communism to crumble.

Using period film footage and on-camera interviews, film makers Rob Dennis and Mark Byne uncover the complexities of living under totalitarian rule.

Featuring dissidents, artists, escape organizers and ordinary people in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, ‘Beyond the Wall” humanizes life under Communism and highlights the complex issues that still face the region.

“The stories of living in a totalitarian country are often complicated and dichotomic,” said Susan Chandler, director of the Czech Heritage Museum in Temple.

“People had their basic needs met - housing, a job, food, healthcare, vacations. One could live a decent life if they did not think too hard about it. Which made it most difficult for artists, scientists, philosophers and anthropologists. Art was heavily censured. Science was sacrificed to popular doctrines. Free thinking was criminal – people were jailed for it. The activities of outside cultures were debunked. Travel was strictly regulated.

“Free education was provided to some but could be easily denied. If your grandparents had been a bit middle class under the free democracy period, by owning a few acres and farming it, or if your third cousin had left during the Prague Spring in 1968, that could disqualify even a devout communist from a college education, even in 1988, regardless of excellent test scores and school records.

“It was dangerous to question the obviously absurd ideologies, systems and regulations, so people found ways to survive, psychologically. Therefore young Czech artists such as Vaclav Havel wrote in the genre of the theater of the absurd. It was the actual matrix in which they were living. These works were smuggled out to the West, which eventually brought help,” Chandler said.

“From what our European visitors to the Museum have been telling me the last few years, knowledge is once more in jeopardy. They tell me that people are forgetting – or never knew – how things were under communism,” said Chandler.

For more on this topic, visit this interview of John Bok with Radio Prague

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/one-on-one/john-bok-former-dissident-still-driven-by-anti-establishment-zeal