THE SECOND LIFE OF LIDICE (2002)

In June 1942, shortly after the assassination of acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, the village of Lidice near Prague was burnt to the ground. Radio in the Protectorate and in the Third Reich reported this staggering news immediately after the tragedy, with the typical pathos of Goebbels' propaganda.
Shortly after this even , author Viktor Fischl wrote an idea for a documentary film meant to reconstruct these sad events. That same year, renowned filmmaker Humphrey Jennings shot the film in the village of Cwmgiedd in southern Wales. Thus was born the film The Silent Village, which significantly contributed to making Lidice a powerful international symbol in the struggle against Nazism.
The Second Life of Lidice is a documentary essay on the changing views of the Lidice tragedy. The search for the legacy of these sad events 60 years after the war summarizes the absurdity of Nazi propaganda, which aroused a level of reaction that the Germans not expected and that gave the British and their allies a clear symbol for the need to win the war.
Paradoxically, this view of Lidice as an important catalyst in a new phenomenon in the Czech Republic. Half a century of communist slogans replaced "fascism" with "imperialism," and used Lidice for its own objectives.
The Second Life of Lidice is based on the interrelated lives of ordinary people who were personally affected by the events of 10 June 1942.
The link between Lidice's tragic fate and a village in Wales remains alive today even though the inhabitants of the two villages have never met in person. This offers a message of hope as we search for a modern mythology of these wartime events, which finally have been given the chance to call for peace, unfettered by the ideological burden of the past.

Directed by: Pavel Štingl, 58 minutes