September 11, 2014 Film Series Features Czech Documentary Films

The Library of Congress, in collaboration with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, will present a film series titled “Docs in Salute.”

The series of films produced in the Czech Republic—many with Jewish themes—was launched at the Library of Congress in 2012. The 2014 series will feature three documentaries that will be screened at the Library at 1 p.m. on Sept. 17, Oct. 1 and Oct. 29 in the Mary Pickford Theater, located on the third floor of the James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

The series, which is free and open to the public, is presented by the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic and the Hebrew Language Table. The films are in English and Czech with English subtitles. Tickets are not required.

The Library’s 2014 Docs in Salute series will begin on Sept. 17 with “The Trials” from the documentary trilogy “Between a Star and a Crescent” by director Petr Bok (58 minutes). “The Trials” reveals that the Jews of Czechoslovakia were victims not only of the tragedy of the Holocaust but also of the subsequent communist tyranny. Czech researcher, scriptwriter and filmmaker Martin Šmok will be present at the event.

The series continues on Oct. 1 with “Father of the Refugees” (58 minutes), another film in the trilogy “Between a Star and a Crescent,” directed by Bok. The film centers on the mysterious death of Charles Jordan, a top American Jewish official who was to present his groundbreaking plan to rehabilitate Palestinian refugees to the United Nations a week after his death. Jordan’s drowning in Prague in 1967—two months after Israel’s stunning victory over several Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War—remains a mystery.

On Oct. 29, Georgetown University students and alumni will present “Glimpses of Kafka’s Fiction and Memoirs for the Stage” directed by Georgetown faculty in Theater and Performance Studies. The one-hour program will include a short film on Kafka, monologue adaptations from Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and selections from his other works.

Petr Bok is a Czech screenwriter, producer and documentary director born in Prague. After graduating from the Czech Film and Television Academy in 1998, Bok established his own production company, VERAfilm, and devoted his energy and imagination to documentaries. Together with the Swiss-born filmmaker Martin Šmok, Bok focuses on making films about the mechanisms of power, the intelligence community and the Holocaust. Šmok worked as a senior research advisor for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.