A personal perspective on the Prague Spring, fifty years later, is offered by filmmakers who were studying at FAMU in Prague at the time.

These members of the so-called “Czech school” went on to create some of the most important films in the former Yugoslavia.

Predrag "Pega" Popović is a renowned director of photography, the first formally educated cinematographer in the former Yugoslavia, a professor and former dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, and the man behind 26 feature films.

While studying at the prestigious FAMU in Prague—alongside Goran Marković, Srđan Karanović, Lordan Zafranović, Goran Paskaljević, and Rajko Grlić, all of whom appear in this film—he witnessed the Prague Spring of 1968, the subsequent intervention by the USSR and five Warsaw Pact countries, and, as a tragic epilogue, the self-immolation of Jan Palach in January 1969.

Pega Popović is one of the few people who photographed Jan Palach’s body in the Prague morgue. These images, a major exclusive, were published by leading international magazines, including Paris Match and Epoca.

One layer of this film tells the story of how Popović managed to take those photos at a time when Soviet tanks were still on the streets of Prague—or just around the corner—and how his professor, Milan Kundera, brought a Paris Match journalist to him and said:
“If anyone can give you what you need, it’s him.”

Popović handed her the photographs—but under one rather unusual condition: he would not be credited as the author.

This seemingly simple decision opens up entirely new levels of meaning in this story.

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