Enter the new year in the company of one of the most inspirational personalities of modern Czech history. Meet the woman who has motivated and supported the first Czech president Václav Havel all her life. Meet the first lady and friend who never pushed her way to the foreground but always shone bright in the background. Watch the global online premiere of OLGA by Czech director Miroslav Janek in the week from January 5 to 11 at DAFilms.com!
Václav Havel. A name that does not need a lengthy introduction and that still reverberates in the Czech society. A few weeks ago, it has been three years since his death in 2011. It has already become clear that the legacy of the democratic tradition which he introduced to the Czech post-revolutionary society of 1989 will not vanish with his departure. However, do we know the woman who stood by his side in the times of political oppression as well as in the times of turbulent democratic changes? The woman who not only stood by his side but even actively created the political and ideological environment which gave rise to many of the key theses of Václav Havel? PLEASE MEET OLGA HAVLOVÁ…
“Our aim was to find a narrative mode that would reveal the spiritual essence of a personality that is both inspiring and strengthening and use emotional channels to introduce Olga in the very way in which she left her mark on the lives of her friends and acquaintances who still walk this earth. Biographical data are thus pushed to the very end of the narrative spectrum,” says Czech-born and globally acclaimed director Miroslav Janek about his approach to his latest film. Working as a lecturer at the Department of Documentary Film at Prague’s FAMU, he is renowned for his own film work as well as for his extensive international collaborations, for instance with American experimental film legend Godfrey Reggio.
The film OLGA, which is available online for the first time thanks to the global premiere at DAFilms.com, follows the life of the first wife of president Václav Havel by means of a varied and yet unpublished footage. She is a woman who became one of the crucial personalities of the political dissent of the 1970s and 1980s in communist Czechoslovakia and who, thanks to her friendly and sincere character, became a sought-after friend of many personalities that joined the Czech underground movement. In 1979, she founded and managed The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted that aimed to make the cases of political prisoners public; in the democratic times of the 1990s, she founded the still active charitable organization The Committee of Good Will – The Olga Havel Foundation. Olga Havlová died on January 27, 1996. The online premiere of the film thus becomes a reminder of her tireless and inspiring activities.
Please meet the first lady of Czechoslovak dissent as well as of post-November Czech democracy who became an extraordinary personality in many other respects as well. Watch OLGA in a global premiere at DAFilms.com from January 5 to 11, 2015!
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