We will remain faithful

Opening statement: Paul Wade, Director of the British Council Czech Republic

A significant emerging talent in Czech film, Jiří Weiss left Czechoslovakia in 1938 for political reasons and went to England, where he gained work on commissions for the exiled Foreign Office and later for private productions. Many of his documentaries dealt with military environments. In 1945, Weiss returned to his homeland and used his own and archival material to edit the feature film Věrni zůstaneme (We Remain Faithful), which focused on the struggle of Czech soldiers on the Western Front. This reflection on wartime events has often been compared to Vávra's The Way to the Barricades. The comparison went against Weiss because, according to most critics, ‘Weiss gave this interpretation from an idealised Western point of view, while Vávra gives a Czechoslovak interpretation’.

"Within the framework of We Will Remain Faithful, it was possible to capture the individual components of our resistance - especially the airmen - and today, despite the gap of years, it seems to me that these documentary shots I made will perhaps survive all my feature films, even if my name on them will be as anonymous as the faces of the airmen and soldiers. I myself saw the film at its premiere on 28 October 1945 in Prague and then fifty years later at the Filmotheque. I confess that at a recent screening my eyes watered at the memory of our naivety and especially the faith we all felt in ourselves at the time." - Jiří Weiss (1995)

Screening in cooperation with the British Council Czech Republic.

as a pre-film we will show unique footage from Tobruk:

Czechoslovak soldiers in Tobruk

c.1943 / 10 min. / silent / HD transcript from 16 mm

The 11th Czechoslovak Infantry Battalion arrived in Tobruk on 21 October 1941 to defend the besieged city from attacks by German and Italian troops together with British, Australian and Polish soldiers. During two combat deployments, the Czechoslovaks spent a total of twelve months in extremely difficult conditions (October 1941 - April 1942; December 1942 - June 1943).

One of the few surviving images from their wartime deployment in North Africa shows in short sequences, among other things, the military posts, the streets of the town with Italian inscriptions on orientation signs and the buildings of the local hospital. A longer continuous section is devoted to our soldiers visiting the graves of fallen comrades.

This extremely valuable material, shot by an unknown cameraman on 16 mm format, will have its public premiere in Ponrepo.