This film captures footage of parents talking to their kids about their experiences during the Velvet Revolution. We want to show how we ourselves experienced that day, our perceptions of the demonstration - which we assumed was just another demonstration, not the deciding event of a Revolution.
Parents told their stories in playful ways. They gathered around a giant map set up on Narodni trida (National Street) and chose a small toy that would represent them at the time of the Velvet Revolution. It acts as their Avator, and it makes the parents' stories more playful and accessible to the children. At the same time, the Avatar allows the parents to lose their self-consciousness and shyness as they are presenting their private stories to a camera.
Our project is time sensitive. Our children are growing, their interests in our family stories are changing. We wonder if our stories will slip away forgotten, if other information that children hear at school will change their perspectives (elementary schools rarely devote much time to teaching modern Czech history).
In some families, we can see traces of the impact that our attempts to relay our stories to the children might have had, as they grow up and find their own political causes, their own passions.
Through our film, we want to inspire and motivate people to tell their personal stories to their families.
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