Documentary ****************************************************************************************** * Youth to Youth: The Freedom Mosaic ****************************************************************************************** Youth to Youth: The Freedom Mosaic presents a mosaic of narratives of former student revol from 1989. The documentary captures their memories on the late 1980’s in Czechoslovakia, t Revolution and on the decades after. It shows how the narrators reflected the 1990’s – eup as well as critically –, the beginning of the new millennium and our present days. Oral hi interviews are completed with a period footage and historical commentaries by our teachers Vaněk [ URL "https://oralhistory.fhs.cuni.cz/OHSDEN-21.html"] and Jana Wohlmuth Markupová oralhistory.fhs.cuni.cz/OHSDEN-26.html"] . The documentary was created in cooperation of the Czech Television and the Institute of Co History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2019. It was made using primarily oral history conducted as a part of a research project University Students of 1989 in Longitudinal Pers Biographical Interviews Twenty Years Later at the Institute of Contemporary History. The p realized by researchers and authors of the book One Hundred Student Evolutions (Academia 2 "https://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/268762/sto-studentskych-evoluci/"] , following a successful b Student Revolutions (Lidové noviny 1999 and Karolinum 2019) [ URL "https://www.kosmas.cz/k studentskych-revoluci/"] . *========================================================================================= * From the summary of the book One Hundred Student Evolutions: *========================================================================================= The book One Hundred Student Evolutions. University Students of 1989 in Longitudinal Persp Biographical Interviews After Twenty Years focuses on student activists of 1989. It presen of the successful project Students during the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia – biogra (1997-1999) and the publication One Hundred Student Revolutions (Nakladatelství Lidové Nov Karolinum, 2019). Through the newly applied method of longitudinal oral history, the book to capture the influence of the formative experience of the November 1989 revolution on th of the narrators, former student activists of 1989, encompassing the personal, professiona political level. Our work is informed by the concept of „symbolic centres“, i.e. a set of values attached to crucial events of national history, in this case the revolution of 1989 The same sample of original narrators was approached for the project; 12 narrators were re respondents, as some had passed away, could not be traced, or in three cases, refused to p the project. Altogether, between January 2017 and November 2018, we recorded interviews wi narrators from nine regions of the Czech Republic, comprising more than 200 hours of audio addition, video recordings were made with 65 narrators). In total, the transcripts of the cca. 6,500 standard pages. The longitudinal approach was applied for the first time in the context of Czech oral hist methodological part of the book, the authors compare this experience with colleagues from of psychology and documentary filmmaking. They also introduce a new, previously undiscusse dimension, termed „longitudinality within longitudinality“, where the gap between the firs up interviews comprised about 8-12 months. In the meantime, parliamentary and presidential place in the country, which provoked strong reactions from our narrators. Aside from the s the book also reflects on the changes that happened in the narrators’ personal lives durin years since the last project. All the covered episodic events convinced us that we develop and react to new stimuli, and demonstrate how memory develops. The chapter Generations attempts to answer the question whether we can speak about a stude if so, to what extent was it a homogenous generational grouping. At the centre of our rese stood the meanings attributed to this generation, but historical influences such as luck a also taken into account. The chapter attempts to evaluate to what extent the connecting el narrators’ shared historical experience was a common ideology of the former students or ju the existing communist ideology. It also discusses the presumed and real influence of the of Youth on the former student activists, as well as their difference, as representatives youth”, from the “free youth” of the Underground. Our research focus also covered intergen understandings of November 1989 and the events that followed from the perspective of both the parents and children of our narrators. Our research shows that while some former student activists use the term “generation”, the to themselves, i.e. university students, rather than all young people in the country, all same age, or even all universities or all students of their own university. At the centre stories stands only the minority that actively took part in the student protests and strik students can thus be described as the generation of the experience of November 1989, yet s was shared by society as a whole. For the students, the added value in relation to this hi their own activity and participation in the student strike and Velvet Revolution of 1989. The chapter Variations of the Revolution attempts to follow the ways in which the former s their experience of the Velvet Revolution and asks whether and how this experience still i present lives. Three different approaches arose from a study of their life stories: A) the “commitment”; B) the revolution as a “fulfilled obligation”; C) the revolution as a “prepa If for the first two groups interest in current events appears natural, the difference bet primarily in their understanding of their own public engagement, the view of the third gro in the question of whether any kind of engagement has any real chance of success. In this noteworthy finding is that regardless of the strategy used to relate to the revolution, a the narrators’ stories is occupied by Václav Havel, not only as one of the key actors of t dissent, or Czech post-1989 politics, but also as a symbol of the revolution. Using Havel’ towards civil society, we attempted to explain why our narrators, if they at all actively current events, perhaps also as a result of their professions, tend towards civil society “traditional” politics. The final chapter Golden Nineties? focuses on a wholly new topic compared to the previous 1990s and how the former students remember this period. While the original interviews were this time, the new interviews demonstrate that this decade is now clearly considered to be past by the narrators, and moreover represents a formative time for them. The chapter exam of positive, even nostalgic memories of the „wild nineties“ amongst our sample, which they the growing critical reception of the transformation years in the public sphere. The chapt the double-edged nature of the memories of the 1990s oscillating between euphoria and crit as individual and collective memory. It identifies two main narrative strategies the narra separating their personal experiences from wider political and social developments and sel relating to the naivety with which they placed hopes in the new era. A further significant memory of this decade covered by the chapter is the ethos of individualism, which emerged current interviews, but was absent in the original project. The current set of interviews valuable source not only for investigating the events of November 1989, but also the perio Regardless of the various individual experience and life journeys of the one hundred narra stories show that the experience of the Velvet Revolutions is inherently connected with th the authors did not take a possible longitudinal continuation into account, today they are finish the project in fifteen years’ time.