Elective Affinities

After a considerable period of enforced silence, the Prague Spring of 1968 gave Vachek the chance to start filming again. There was no time for lengthy deliberation – he threw himself into the political events that were consuming society at the time. Armed with a 16mm camera and tape recorder, he went off to capture the election of the president of the republic; in its naked form, this was something unparalleled. Where other cameras were switched off, Vachek was just getting started with his. The film exudes authenticity, paradoxically reinforced by the conscious presence of the camera, and underscored by the ironic juxtaposition of the high and the low, the dramatic and comic, official and personal. Politicians Dubček, Svoboda, Smrkovský and Černík, tracked by Vachek’s lens, are ordinary, even ridiculous – real people without any kind of media mask. The muddle-headed General Svoboda requests an independent television channel for the army, Smrkovský inveighs against anti-Semitism in the Party, and the filmmakers peek through a keyhole at the "secret” preparations for a banal resolution. The film, in style reminiscent of the "direct cinema” documentary genre, is named after Goethe’s novel, itself an allusion to the changes in "political marriages”. Subsequent events temporarily altered the film’s ironic intent. In August Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Warsaw Pact armies. The film, released in cinemas after the occupation, was watched with a sense of nostalgia, and its key players became national martyrs.