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Film screening followed by Q&A with director Ruth Zylberman (filmmaker and author) and Ivan Margolius (see below).
In 2018 workers in Prague find film reels that had been hidden in an abandoned warehouse since the fall of the Berlin wall. These are images from the Slánský trial which in 1952 was the peak of Stalinist terror and anti-semitism: a macabre production in which 14 top leaders of the communist regime, most of them Jews, were accused of imaginary crimes and forced, through torture and threats, to make a public confession of their guilt, which was also imaginary. 11 of them were sentenced to death and hanged.
With the help of these recently restored exceptional archives and a dive into the archives of the secret police, Ruth Zylberman went to meet these broken families in order to retrace the complex trajectory of three of these men, Rudolf Slánský, Artur London and Rudolf Margolius. Three communists, three men destroyed by a world they had helped to build and where the lie that became the law managed to subvert, beyond the political field, the most elementary bonds of human society.
Ivan Margolius, son of Rudolf Margolius who was sentenced to death during the political trials in 1952. He is an author whose work includes memoirs and a number of books and articles on art, architecture, engineering, design and automobile history. He was born in Prague and studied architecture both there and in London following his arrival in the UK in 1966.
Admission £5 see booking link below
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