In the new works of the cycle, people from the industry look at music, for example, as a business item, an ideological tool, but also as a bearer of fashion trends or graphic design, said CT spokeswoman Karolína Blinková. Jiří Suchý, Ladislav Štaidl, Josef Laufer, Jožo Ráž, Helena Vondráčková, Marta Kubišová, Marie Rottrová, František Janeček, Karel Vágner and music publicists Josef Vlček and Jiří Černý comment on the time.
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“We talk to the interviewees freely, without elbows, but also without napkins. About money, ties, defiance and adjustment. The interviewees behave differently. Some go through self-reflection, others obscure, others displace. ‘I had a family, you know’, ‘I had nothing to censor’, ‘I wasn’t a hero, I just wanted to make music’. Answers of the familiar kind we know from home, from ordinary people. All those who lived normal lives in abnormal times. Pop was obviously no exception. Here, too, compromises were made, good or bad decisions, ”said director and screenwriter Jakub Skalický.
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Censorship of texts
Among other things, the audience will learn how the singer Miroslav Žbirka views the censorship of the lyrics of the 1970s and 1980s or the commentary of the publicist Jiří Černý on the efforts of Czechoslovak musicians to break through abroad.
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Miro Žbirka in the eighties.
Foto: Universal Music
“The script was created and developed gradually. Initially, Jakub Skalický and Radek Diestler and I agreed on a skeleton. Subsequently, we freely asked the artists questions, only with regard to the intended areas. Thanks to that, we were also able to draw on older interviews, as many of the interviewees are no longer alive, ”said screenwriter Aleš Opekar. Among those mentioned are, for example, Karel Gott, Antonín Matzner, Karel Štědrý or Eva Pilarová.
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In addition to authentic testimonies of authors and performers, the cycle also brings a number of rare photographs and samples from the archives. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the TV staff, some of the things shot on film have been reconstructed into a broadcast form. For example, music numbers inserted into the military magazine Azimut have not been broadcast for almost 50 years.
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