Film Waves recreates battle outside Czechoslovak Radio
The first days of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia were closely tied to the Czechoslovak Radio building in front of which bloody clashes took place and at least 15 civilians were killed. The newly released film Waves, inspired by the true story of a group of journalists from the radio’s foreign service section, focuses on these traumatic events and the preceding Prague Spring period.
The story of the journalists working for the Czechoslovak Radio’s international editorial offices during the invasion and in the months leading up to the event is the focus of a newly released film called Waves, directed by Jiří Mádl and co-produced by Czech Radio.
While researching the topic, Mádl met with several of the original staff members, including Jana Šmídová, the daughter of Milan Weiner, who headed the office. Šmídová, who was 19 at the time, worked in the radio as an editorial assistant. This is how she described the moments leading to the invasion to Czech Radio.
“The atmosphere in the radio grew very tense because, thanks to my Dad, we had access to foreign agencies, and the editors themselves had various contacts. So I think they kind of expected what was going to happen, but at the same time refused to believe it.
“On August 20, I was working a night shift at the radio, and already in the evening the first reports began to come in that Soviet troops had been spotted inside the country. The rest is history.”
To recreate Czechoslovakia's struggle against the Soviet tanks as truthfully as possible, Mádl used never-before-seen historical footage a well as AI-technology. According to Jana Šmídová, who witnessed the events with her own eyes, the result is very convincing.
“Even though it's half fiction and half documentary, that's exactly what it looked like here. Of course, we were in absolute shock. I came from the night shift and there were military airplanes roaring over our heads. It was absolutely crazy, the traffic was collapsing, so we ran to the radio station and there were tanks and there was shooting.”
Mrs Šmídová also says it was the first time in her life she saw a dead person, a memory she will never be able to erase from her mind:
“I once saw an uncle who died peacefully in his 80s surrounded by his family. But here was someone lying on the ground, with a blood-soaked flag and shoes that looked like they could belong to a 19-year-old. They were very fashionable, that's what flashed through my mind at the time.”
As these events unfolded outside the Czechoslovak Radio building, Milan Weiner was in the hospital with an incurable brain tumour and died just a few months later. However, his daughter Jana followed in his footsteps and, after the fall of the Communist regime, worked for many years as a Czech Radio reporter.
