Linda Jablonska Movies

In 1989, the Velvet Revolution transformed Czechoslovakian society from two socialist republics into a democracy that experienced a brief nationalist unification. Democratic practices and ideals, of course, granted open and seemingly unlimited political choice to Czech residents (even after the Velvet Divorce), and thus fostered an entire generation of Czech youth who became roundly accustomed to the pursuit of their own individual political ideals. As in the United States and other countries, a bipartisan system developed, divided between conservatives and liberals. With her documentary Left, Right, Forward, filmmaker Linda Jablonska (of the Czech Republic) politically cross-sections the members of the Czechoslovakian populace who belong to her generation. With eyes on both political camps, she examines the behavior in left and right-wing factions, manifest not only in centralized issues such as social ideals and plans to formally run for office, but in such seemingly inconsequential arenas as cigarette brands and music. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Under the leadership of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea's has reinforced its status as a nation that refuses to open itself to the scrutiny of the world; a fiercely Stalinist regime in a world where Communism has become an anachronism, North Korea is a place where human rights violations are common, government control of the daily lives of its people is a given and hostility towards the United States is a dangerous but popular game. So where better to spend a few days off? While North Korea has largely shut itself off to the West, remarkably travel agencies in the Czech Republic offer package tours to North Korea (albeit with limits on what visitors can do and where they can go), and filmmaker Linda Jablonska joined a group of Czech tourists as they went sightseeing in North Korea, documenting their adventures with consumer-grade video camera. The film Vitejte v KLDR! (aka Welcome To North Korea!) is a witty but sometimes harrowing chronicle of what Jablonska and her fellow visitors found there -- hotel rooms wired with surveillance devices, cheerful tour guides who were the only Koreans permitted to talk to the tourists, vast buildings that have gone unfinished thanks to financial troubles, grinding poverty among the people while the Czechs are shown uncommon generosity, and frequent tributes to the Communist state that seem either ironic or baffling to the Czechs. Welcome To North Korea! was an official selection at the 2009 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi