Jiří Vanýsek

„Totalitarian thinking is in fact a thinking, which simplifies all matters; due to laziness and lack of intelligence or knowledge. Totalitarian thinking always aspires to label the world, to establish a kind of security, to secure state of matters. And there are many theories, which put everything into boxes and the society gets organised. Obviously it is always related to a certain personality becoming popular, possessing leadership qualities. Unfortunately that also applies to democracy. As the leaders, those with leadership qualities are not always the best of people. And totalitarianism is even related to so called clichés; such as good, evil, what is right and what is wrong.“

“Yet we were so directed by the school atmosphere, that it was completely out of question anyone of us joined the communist party. I would say that the school was really anti-communistic. There was no member of the party or anyone taking it at all seriously. I believe that it was the most hard-core centre of anti-communism back in 1960s. Moreover, all the graduates before us were showing it in their works. There was such atmosphere, I remember that we had to attend a class of Marxism and a certain man came in to lecture us, and I think it was called the theory of culture, but actually it regarded mostly Marxism. And back then around 1966 in Moscow there was a process against two writers. They were imprisoned for writing their books and we were discussing with that man or a comrade, whether it is write or wrong to send people to prison for their works. And he was defending it quite weakly. And we kept attacking him and it all ended up by him running out of the lecture room. He got upset, took his stuff and ran out. And we were oh so excited to manage something like that. Vávra (note: Otakar Vávra, a director and a FAMU pedagogue back than), he must have heard of it somewhere or he was notified about the fact his students were misbehaving and really told us off. But not for what we said, but for getting revealed in such a way. That it will be recorded in our materials and that we were totally dumb for doing such nonsense and so on.“