"Wherever I went, I made bitter enemies with the brass hats for various reasons. And they got rid of me in various ways, by first sending me - they thought they would break me - to the non-commissioned officers' school. That I would be in command. The so-called non-commissioned officers' school was in Klecany, I joined the unit in Počernice, the PTP [actually the 1st Road Construction Battalion of Auxiliary Production], the worst unit in the world supposedly, 3513 Horní Počernice. I immediately assimilated there because, you know, coming from the background I came from, in those harsh conditions, the characters have a completely different.... how should I put it, the energy radiated from them, it was more readable. Or at least for me. So I, the very first day we were brought in, in October, from that receiver, in the fog, in the barracks, mud everywhere, fields. Downstairs, the wintering grounds of the Humberto Circus. The only pub on the Forge where it was always grinding. When the soldiers showed up, with the circus people... it was a daily MMA battle in those days. And now you can feel the emptiness in front of you. And I had it even worse because I knew I couldn't make a mistake, I couldn't make a single wrong step in the next two months because if they found out that I wasn't basically a graduate and that the epaulettes I had were illegal, that would be a court-martial and who knows how that could end."
"The day before, I remember... Today, there is that house, the DRN, on Národní třída. A huge black house, nota bene Standa Fiala, one of my classmates at the Prague Technical University, is the author, and there used to be a parking lot. There in Mikulandská Street was a pub called U Rarášků, it was a kind of filmmakers' den, that's where the Prague bohemians met, that's where everybody met. And there was a parking lot before that, a kind of a gap. And the day before, I don't know if I went from there or there, there were stacked containers or unimoboxes or whatever it was called then. And I saw that they had brought in these special forces, heavily clad in these black helmets, police or army, I don't know, something like that. Now I don't know if it was a day, two days, it was just before that Narodni trida thing. And then I never saw them again. I was on that Narodni trida, and I was like, 'If these guys jump out of those booths, we're all dead.'
"We arrived in Prague from Smichov, normally the journey took four hours - three or four hours. We drove for about 20 hours! We were constantly being stopped, freight trains with military equipment passed us. I remember all these guys spitting out of the windows and telling us, 'Just spit.' And my dad brought back a transistor radio from Germany, and I remember when we had that shutdown, everybody would roll up on the platform and listen to the transistor broadcasts. I remember, really, that you could really hear the gunfire and the interruptions, then the commentator changed, somebody else was commentating again. There for the first time - it gave me goosebumps - I realized something was wrong."
Libor Fránek was born on 18 November 1960 in Karviná - Ráj. His father Drahomír was a member of the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, although he came from a mining family. His mother Irena was born in Prachatice; she was the daughter of a Sudeten German who died in World War II. Her relatives were deported after the war, as a result of which the family was unable to escape the negative political profile, especially since neither of her parents were in the Communist Party. Libor Fránek followed suit. He vividly recalls the occupation in 1968, when he and his parents were returning from his grandmother‘s house in Prague and his father walked with him almost to the Czech Radio, where the shooting took place. After graduating from high school, his artistic talent led him to the architecture department of the Brno University of Technology. In 1982 he got married, and since his wife Milena was studying at the medical faculty in Prague, he managed to transfer to the Czech Technical University in Prague. Even though the studies there were of a much better standard, he longed to continue at the Academy of Performing Arts, where he could also pursue stage design; he entered the fourth year there. At the end of his studies, he refused to become a candidate to join the Communist Party, which meant failing the state exam in scientific communism and many problems with basic military service. In the mid-1980s, Libor Fránek began to devote himself fully to his profession. At the same time, with his friends from the artistic milieu, he participated in the dissemination of publications against the regime. After the Velvet Revolution, he continued to work in scenography, architecture and design. He worked on numerous successful projects and currently he is also a teacher at the Department of Architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague. At the time of filming he was living in Prague.
Libor Fránek (left) with his roommate, now an architect, Ludvík Grym - memorial service for the late J. Lennon, Purkyňova dormitory, Brno University of Technology, 1980
Libor Fránek (left) with his roommate, now an architect, Ludvík Grym - memorial service for the late J. Lennon, Purkyňova dormitory, Brno University of Technology, 1980
