#prague film fund

[marcovaleyeah]

20.10.24

#Marco-Marathon | MCU

Film Name: Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019); Production Studios: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios, The Czech Republic State Fund for Support and Development of Cinematography, Pascal Pictures, Prague Film Fund, Matt Tolmach Productions; Director by: Jon Watts; Screenwriter: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers; Starring: Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders; Genres: Fantasy, Science-fiction, Action, Adventure; Running Time: 2 hours 9 minutes;

"Spider-Man: Far from Home" is an exciting sequel where Peter Parker (Tom Holland) tries to live a normal life after "Endgame". During a school trip to Europe, he encounters the mysterious Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). The film is distinguished by excellent visual effects, especially during the illusion scenes, and impressive action sequences. Holland's emotional performance and unpredictable plot make the film exciting.

Five stars is a bright, dynamic film with strong characters and unexpected twists.

My rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[mariacallous]

Polish filmmaker Konrad Szolajski’s new documentary looks at nearly a decade of Russian sabotage, espionage and disinformation across Central and Eastern Europe, with an eery actuality.

“Putting the whole project together took a lot of time – it was very difficult,” Konrad Szolajski explains as we meet a few hours before the international premiere of his new documentary, Putin’s Playground, in Prague on June 10.

“At the time, back in 2019, many people saw the topic of Russian espionage and sabotage activities as something of a conspiracy theory,” the Warsaw-based filmmaker tells BIRN. “They weren’t saying they didn’t believe in it, but simply questioned whether there was enough proof and whether it was a good idea to touch the issue at all.”

Yet over the next several years, Szolajski and long-term collaborator and producer Malgorzata Prociak pursued different avenues of funding and partnerships, which soon saw the project – originally intended to focus solely on Poland’s “Waitergate” wiretapping scandal of 2014 – snowball and gain a regional dimension.

Gathering more evidence and backers, Szolajski was soon put on the path of Czechia, where an arms depot with ammunition intended for Ukraine was blown up in the small town of Vrbetice, with Moscow’s figure looming tall behind the blast in 2014, the same year as the eavesdropping scandal had shaken Poland’s political landscape and facilitated the downfall of the Civic Platform government and the rise to power in 2015 of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party.

After receiving support from producers and film funds from several countries – Norway, Czechia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Germany and Poland – “we finally knew we could make the film in February 2022”, Szolajski says, with shooting taking place over the next several months as war raged in next-door Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare

Originally released at the Krakow Film Festival at the end of May 2024, Putin’s Playground provides an overview of Russia’s eclectic “hybrid war” activities across the Central and Eastern European region.

In Poland, Szolajski and his team focus on the “Waitergate” scandal, in which recordings were made by a group of waiters at Sowa i Przyjaciele, an upmarket eatery popular with the Warsaw elite, and the Polish Anti-War Movement, while in Czechia they examine the Vrbetice ammunition depot explosion and the PRO party of far-right agitator Jindrich Rajchl.

The journey – where both Szolajski and Prociak appear in front of the camera for the first time – also includes a look at repeated sabotage operations in Bulgaria, the separatist yearnings of Moldova’s Gagauzia region, or Latvia’s linguistic dilemmas with its large Russian-speaking minority.

Asked during the post-screening Q&A why Hungary was conspicuously absent from the film, Szolajski responded that “they’ve crossed to the other side already” and would therefore not provide a relevant sample of a country still fighting back against Russia’s hybrid influence tactics.

The 91-minute documentary is now being rolled out in Czech cinemas, with more distribution plans in the works, and will also be screened at the Odessa International Film Festival to be held in Kyiv next month.

An updated version is also being prepared to include more recent events, Szolajski tells BIRN, including the dismantling of the Prague-based Voice of Europe disinformation and corruption network.

‘Useful idiots’

When it comes to the disinformation and influence strategy, “Russian tactics are both very complex and quite simple”, Szolajski muses, explaining that they largely look to capitalise on existing frustrations in any society to bring dissatisfied citizens out onto the streets.

“They take advantage of points of conflict and divisions in our societies – whether it be poverty, vaccination, war or gender – strengthen and exploit it, pass it on to their agents of influence in respective countries, and fund all kinds of propaganda material, both online and offline,” he explains.

According to the filmmaker, the scheme is fundamentally the same everywhere, simply adapted to different local and national contexts to target issues that are the most sensitive at a given time.

Supporters of Rajchl’s PRO party in Czechia or activists for the Polish Anti-War Movement “may speak in different languages, may come from the right or the left of the political spectrum, [but] the script is pretty much the same,” Szolajski notes, “and was written in the Kremlin.”

Russian influence and propaganda tactics also tend to avoid a key pitfall, according to the Polish director. “They don’t go out saying that Russia and Putin are great,” which wouldn’t resonate too well in countries with strong anti-Russian sentiments like Poland or even the Czech Republic.

“Instead, they say things like ‘Biden is old’, ‘NATO is aggressive’, ‘the EU is bureaucratic’ and so on”, a plethora of arguments often based on half-truths that make ordinary citizens “feel like they’re in trouble” and that coming to terms with Russia, even if there is little love lost for Putin or the Russian people, is part of the solution, he says.

As the scandal surrounding the Voice of Europe media recently showed, there is a thin line between ordinary citizens, social media users or people in a position of power parroting the Kremlin’s line out of political opportunism or personal belief, and actual agents of influence bankrolled by the Russian state through obscure and possibly illegal schemes.

Taking the example of the former national-conservative PiS government in Poland, Szolajski argues that “Russia especially uses those who are ostensibly anti-Russian”, describing PiS’s hawkish tone against Moscow as “lip-service” as opposed to many of their policies, including their Eurosceptic stance, and weakening of Poland’s counterintelligence network as playing into Putin’s hands.

For Szolajski, PiS’s guilt is clear, but the level and nature of the Kremlin’s infiltration is not. “It’s not clear whether this was done under the influence of actual Russian or pro-Russian agents, or merely because they were stupid enough” to play into the hands of their ostensible rival, he says.

In other countries explored in the documentary, including Bulgaria, Moldova or Latvia, the channels of Russian influence may be more clear-cut than in Poland or Czechia.

As a result of “complete” Russian infiltration, Bulgaria refused to gather evidence on Moscow’s involvement in the repeated sabotage operations, according to Szolajski. While in Czechia, former premier Andrej Babis “simply could not not reveal” the conclusions of the BIS counterintelligence agency which, in 2021, clearly pointed the finger at Russia’s GRU in the deadly Vrbetice depot explosions.

Outsourcing

Although not included in Putin’s Playground, recent events give the documentary’s focus an eerie sense of actuality.

Poland has in recent months experienced a series of suspicious explosions and fires, many of which have been linked to Russia. And although hard-based evidence still appears to be lacking in several cases, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has spearheaded calls to crack down on Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions on the territories of EU and NATO states.

Moscow’s increasing reliance on what analysts have described as “low-cost” spying and sabotage activities has also found an echo across the border in Czechia, where a foreigner was arrested last week for attempting to set fire to a depot of Prague municipal buses. Prime Minister Petr Fiala claimed it was “highly probable” Moscow was behind the attack.

Talking to the local investigative HlidaciPes media on Monday, BIS head Michal Koudelka said the attack showed Russia’s use of foreigners, “often people with some criminal background… who may not even know they were recruited by Russia”, was part of a new tactic.

The impact of such attacks should not be underestimated, according to the head of Czech counterintelligence. “They have a psychological impact on society, they’re a part of propaganda, based on the idea that the Czech Republic is making itself a target,” he said. “It has the potential to create tensions in society”, and undermine trust in the country’s security and intelligence services.

Crucially, the way governments communicate, the media cover or citizens react to these probable and very physical attacks on sovereign territory are key to whether the Kremlin will achieve its intended goal with these actions.

“The reason I made this documentary is because today war is not so much about tanks and airplanes,” Konrad Szolajski tells BIRN, at least not yet when it comes to EU countries. “It’s about influencing and subduing countries in other ways – ways that are very dangerous because people don’t realise that they are working for Russia” or pushing the Kremlin’s agenda.

Quoting a US Strategic Command officer interviewed for the documentary, Szolajski notes that “in military terms, NATO is strong enough, we are prepared today” to face Russia, including its hybrid military tactics used in the invasion and occupation of Crimea back in 2014.

But, according to the filmmaker, Russia uses European democracies’ greatest strength, “freedom of expression and information”, against themselves to shape public opinion, progressively change policies and, eventually, sap the strength and will of a society to defend itself against aggression. And here too, whether the main culprits are “agents of influence or ‘useful idiots’ is not always clear”.

“It’s an absolute nightmare. We cannot kill our freedom of speech for the sake of safety, but we need to find tools to defend ourselves without introducing censorship,” he says.

Circling back to Poland’s recent series of suspicious arson attacks, commentators noted that pointing the finger at Russia at every incident even despite little evidence could paradoxically play into Moscow’s hands, by creating a climate of panic among the public or giving birth to galloping and self-sustaining speculative bubbles.

A combination of fear, uncertainty, and perceived helplessness that Russia – regardless of its goals or strategy – would always be able to use to its advantage.

[vfxexpress]

PFX, backed by Genesis Capital, expands in the CEE region via an acquisition of Human Film, a VFX and animation studio in Poland

PFX Group, a GPEF IV fund portfolio company of Genesis Capital, based in Prague, Czech Republic, has successfully acquired a 100% stake in the Polish VFX and animation studio, Human Film. This strategic move has expanded PFX Group’s workforce by incorporating 50 highly skilled professionals, surpassing a total of 210 team members. Human, renowned for its expertise in animation and visual effects,…

[mi4011nayaninarayana]

3. Gene Deitch

Story 2

The animator who is unfairly mostly associated with low-budget and unintentional surreal versions of popular US cartoon series, Tom & Jerry and Popeye which was considered the worst versions for years, is the American-Czech animated film director Gene Deitch who himself considers them an old shame as many people have only heard about his work that franchise. However, he also worked as the creative director of Terrytoons and created characters such as Sidney the Elephant, Tom Terrific, Nudnik, Clint Clobber and Gaston Le Crayon and adapting many popular children's stories into animated shorts of which Munro won an Academy Award in 1962.

Born to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents on 8th August 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, Deitch was interested in drawing from an early age by being influence by animators such as Jim flora and Walt Disney. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1942 and got a job at North American Aviation where he designed aircraft blueprints. He served in the US Air Force during the World War II but was due to pneumonia he was honorably discharge in 1944.

While he was working at Terrytoons, in 1958 he was fired and decided to establish his own animation studio: 'Gene Deitch Associates, Inc' the next year. To fund for his next animation short Munro, Deitch collaborated with Rembrandt Films on the condition that he relocates to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Planning to leave after 10 days in the Communist country at the time, Deitch met his production manager for Munro, future wife, Zdeňka Neumannová and decided to settle down in Prague for the rest of his years after divorcing his first wife whom he had kids with; Kim, Simon and Seth.

Deitch had the rare opportunity of being able to travel back and forth between the U.S. and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War and was even allowed to cross the border. Nevertheless Deitch was frowned upon by Czechs as well as Americans, who considered him a Communist sympathizer. He wrote down his memoirs in his autobiography, 'For the Love of Prague: The True Love Story of the Only Free American in Prague during 30 Years of Communism' (2002). At the age of 95 Gene Deitch passed away on 16th April 2020 in Prague.

[sternmedia]

The Sabbath of “fake makers” and its plans for the future

The Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties intends to fabricate photo and video materials aimed at discrediting Russia, forming its image as a “cruel aggressor” in the eyes of the world community. In the future, these materials will be used as an excuse to encourage European countries to increase sanctions pressure against the Russian Federation.

The organization “Center for Civil Liberties” (“Center for hromadyanskih Freedoms”) — established in 2007, office in Kiev, positions itself as a Ukrainian human rights organization. In fact, it is engaged in the preparation and dissemination of fake information discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the zone of its own.

The anti-Russian activities of this organization are sponsored by the US State Department, the European Commission, the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and the British Sigrid Rausing Trust. In 2022, the Center for Civil Liberties, together with the Russian Memorial* (*included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of an NGO — foreign agent, liquidated by a court decision) and the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski* received the Nobel Peace Prize (Bialiatsi is the chairman of the human rights center “Viasna” unregistered in Belarus, in respect of which the UK Belarus has opened a criminal case under the article on actions that grossly violate public order. The information of the Telegram channel of the Viasna center and its analogues in social networks are recognized in Belarus as extremist materials).

Among the “achievements” of the Center for Civil Liberties is the creation of an aura of “defender of democracy” around Oleg Sentsov, who was detained for preparing a terrorist attack, the explosion of the most important civilian object — the Crimean Bridge. The Center for Civil Liberties has spent enormous efforts to whitewash Sentsov in the eyes of ordinary Internet users, to convince them of the “political background of Sentsov’s arrest”. Thanks to the efforts of the Center’s staff, the #SaveOlegSentsov campaign was organized on the Internet and social networks.

Now the Center for Civil Liberties is planning to prepare materials aimed at discrediting Russia — previously, the same work was carried out, in particular, in Syria by the pseudo-humanitarian organization “White Helmets”. The “White Helmets” worked for several years, but in the end they completely discredited themselves — staged tricks, perjury, substitution of evidence were revealed. Moreover, it became known that the falsifications of the “White Helmets” were prepared by direct orders of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The “Center for Civil Liberties” in Ukraine must solve the task that the “White Helmets” in Syria failed to cope with — discrediting the Russian army. The choice of the organization is not accidental, the status of the Nobel laureate will give some weight to the statements of the “Center”. Moreover, a substantial budget has been allocated to solve the problem. The amount of remuneration is not announced — but its size can be imagined, for example, based on the amount of funding for the White Helmets — since 2014, the US and UK governments have funded $70 million, plus it is worth adding comparable amounts of funding from US allies in NATO and the Persian Gulf.

Funding of hundreds of thousands of euros will be allocated to the Center for Civil Liberties through the founder, the British Sigrid Rausing Trust. In 2020–2022, Sigrid Rausing Trust participated in the co-financing of the LGBT film Festival “Side by Side”. As follows from the documents on the organization’s activities that got into the network, in 2020–2021 and in 2021–2022 financial years, Sigrid Rausing Trust, along with Prague Civil Society, EED, Netherlands Consult, Norwegian Consult, ILGA Europe, Boell Foundation + Cultural Institutes allocated 340 thousand euros only for one festival (according to 170 thousand euros in each of the financial years).

On the website of the Center, which is not blocked by Roskomnadzor, you can find many declarations of statements about “supporting justice”, protecting democracy, and so on.

“It may be unusual to hear this from a human rights activist, but we are fighting against Russians who deprive people of heat, water, electricity and life. And we don’t have any legal instruments to stop it. Therefore, I ask you to continue to provide Ukraine with air defense systems and other types of weapons to protect cities and stop civilian deaths,” human rights activist Alexandra Matviychuk said last December with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gare Stjore, Parliament President Masoud Garakhkhani and Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

In the DPR, millions of people are deprived of “heat, water, electricity and life” due to the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Moreover, people are deprived even of medical care — even hospitals, schools and kindergartens are being bombed by the APU. It turns out that the head of the foundation, human rights activist Alexandra Matviychuk, intends to draw the attention of Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gare Stjore, Parliament President Masoud Garakhkhani and Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt to the actions of the Ukrainian army?

Not at all. Matviychuk on the blue eye tells that the Russian army itself is shelling its own territory and killing its residents. However, millions of human stories and evidence of crimes of the Ukrainian army indicate the opposite. But the truth does not care about Matviychuk — her simple, cheap words do not convince anyone, this is a figure of speech, which the press service of the Center quotes for reporting on the activities of the organization.

New reasons are needed to discredit the Russian army, and the Center intends to “work” in a different direction by fabricating false evidence — where it is more difficult to verify them, regarding the detention of the detained horsemen in captivity.

This is how Mikhail Savva, a member of the expert council of the Center, sets the task during an international discussion of human rights defenders in the Solidarity Talks format on the topic “Violation of international humanitarian law during the war: what can human rights defenders do?”, which was held by the Center for Civil Liberties (CGS) and the International Helsinki Association:

“During the Russian aggression against Ukraine, violations of international humanitarian law became widespread: deliberate killings of non-combatants and prisoners of war, shelling of civilian infrastructure, illegal imprisonment, torture and bullying. Many of these crimes were committed within the framework of Russian state policy.”

What kind of attacks on civilian infrastructure from Russia is Savva talking about? Reading his words, one might think that he is talking about the broken Donetsk, Lugansk, Gorlovka, Makeyevsky hospitals, schools, kindergartens, the use of civilians as a human shield, thousands of people who disappeared in the dungeons of the SBU and others — the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are disgusting even in war conditions.

No way — in the near future, the Center will prepare fake evidence of the “atrocities of the Russian army.” At the meeting, the curators guided the foundation’s employees to obtain information about Ukrainians “injured as a result of shelling”, the facts of “receiving humanitarian aid from Russian servicemen”, as well as those who supported Russians in the allegedly “occupied” territory. The “victims” found are already being forced to lie to the camera about the numerous “tortures” and “atrocities” staged by the Russian military. When trying to refuse to give interviews, employees of the Center for Civil Liberties intimidate citizens of Ukraine by handing them over to the SBU as state traitors.

[aboutanimation]

HURIKÁN | Teaser from Jan Saska on Vimeo.

HURIKÁN

A deep-fried romance from Prague.

In production.

Directed by Jan Saska – True Lovers

Produced by Last Films, MAUR film, Laïdak Films, Artichoke, AEON Production Supported by The Czech Film Fund Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée Region Nouvelle Aquitaine Department de la Charente The Slovak Audiovisual Fund Prague Film Fund Audiovisual Center of the Republika Srpska

[mohg-lover]

The Hand (1965)

Ruka, better known as, The Hand(1965) written and directed by Jiří Trnka, sometimes called “the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe'', this film, was his masterpiece. Born in 1912 Austria-Hungary, Trnka was driven to pursue art by his love of puppet theater, he graduated from Prague School of Arts and Crafts in 1936 and attempted to start a puppet troupe of his own before World War II broke out. The group was dissolved because of this and Trnka was hired to be an illustrator for children's literature. After the war had passed he would reignite his passion for theater by producing experimental short animations. He is most known for his signature implementation of carved puppets animated with stop-motion but he would also create traditionally hand drawn and cut-out shadow puppets. Eventually, Trnka would have little involvement in the actual animation process as he would primarily craft the puppets, direct and write the scripts for his later works. As his career progressed Trnka would become disillusioned with the world of art, following the start of the sixties, his films would take on a heavy degree of pessimism, shown by his writing taking on a satirical and introspective lens. Even though he got his start in the industry working on children’s literature, Trnka’s films were mostly intended for a more adult audience and his final project was no exception. 

Showcasing the versatility of his film making technique, Ruka would be a multimedia project. A carved puppet, sculptures, models, clay, a human hand, cutout illustrations and pulsating electronic backdrops are all present in this 20 minute short. The main and only carved puppet, bearing resemblance to a harlequin, is a pottery sculptor, creating pots for his favored flower, watering it everyday and caring for it in his own little world. His routine is interrupted by an ominous white glow who sees his creation and encourages him to make something different by shaping the pot into a hand. The puppet refuses but the glove continues to try and persuade him with gifts and then propaganda. The puppet tries his best to resist but is eventually tricked by the hand and is put into a birdcage. Puppeteered by strings, the harlequin is forced to craft a marble statue for the hands, lifeless and defeated upon its completion he is awarded medals and fancy objects by the hands for his service, which he has no reaction to. Once the hand leaves he quickly burns his strings with a nearby candle and pushes over the statue to make his daring escape. Tumbling through an endless dark void the puppet finally makes it back to his home. After experiencing the horror of the will of the hands he takes apart his bed to barricade himself inside but in his haste he knocks over his coveted plant from the top of a dresser, it hits him right on the head, sending him tumbling backwards and ending his life. The hand easily breaks down his barricades only to find their little artist motionless. They give him a proper burial, sending him off with his flower next to his candle lit coffin, the flower finally budding, growing to completion, despite the circumstances. The subject matter of the film showcases a universal truth that all true artists fear, the silencing of one’s vision, being forced to create something that brings you nothing but shame as it takes hours of your life from you. Without a doubt, Trnka would have experienced compromise of his visions working within art studios and with parties that he would need the approval of to receive funding, as long as another person to approve your work for it to exist, compromise is present. The silence of this project speaks louder than any words could, much of an artist's suffering is silent when dealing with parties much larger than the themselve. The true greatness of this short is that its story is not exclusive to the art world, though that is where I assume Trnka got the inspiration for this work, its message speaks on the whole of the dangers and lengths powerful entities will go to, to enforce conformity. With such a powerful message the film has been universally praised, winning 2 awards the year it was produced and another in 1966 and 1990. It will remain a timeless classic due to Trnka's contribution to the world of film and animation. Ruka was however banned from public display in the country it was produced in, Czechoslovak, for two decades, as it was considered a protest towards the current the countries communist state towards artist works. 4 years later Trnka would die from heart complications. Leaving The Hand(1965) to be his final film.

References:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hand_(1965_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Trnka

[galaxygolfergirl]

What we know about Goncharov’s mysterious director, Matteo JWHJ 0715 and his tragic, yet fascinating life.

He was born as Matteo Di Sciocchezze to a poor catholic farming family on November 5th, 1938, in Torre del Greco, just outside of Naples, during the fascist Mussolini regime.

It is rumored that the Sciocchezzes were heavily indebted to the Russian-Italian Chmerkovskiy crime family, after they bought a surplus of inventory from Matteo’s father’s cheese-making business when they weren’t able to sell off the excess supply.

His older brother Macareo was killed by German Nazis during WW2, causing him to have an intense hatred of Nazism and fascism, which would later be themes in his work.

Self-identified as bisexual in his teens but was shunned by his family. He would later join Fuori!, or “Out!”, the first homosexual organization in Italy, in 1972, soon after its founding after being attracted to its initial Marxist ideals. It was one of the first associations of the Italian homosexual liberation movement.

Matteo was briefly married to actress Rita Lozionne and had one son with her, Bruno Lozionne, in 1970, but the separated soon after she gave birth.

Sophia Loren mentioned in a 1984 Variety article that she had been “madly in love with Matteo” at one point during their relationship in the early 1960s but had to end their relationship because of the “incident in Prague.” She would not go into further detail.

Changed his last name to his license plate number, rejecting his homophobic family and becoming disillusioned with the idea of nationalistic self-identity.

Knew John Waters and helped fund some of his earlier films.

Aside from Goncharov, the only other surviving work in his filmography, most which was tragically lost in a studio fire in Milan in 1987, were the underground early 60s short films “Tales of the Dog,” a 4 part series, and his 90 minute 1968 film “Green Candles.” These works are incomplete and partially damaged due to the fire.

Matteo had been in a gay love affair with the married producer Domenico Procacci (pictured below from a still one of Matteo’s “Tales of the Dog” films) during the production of Goncharov. Procacci admitted to this years later in 1998, and that they had been planning to leave for San Francisco before his untimely death.

Matteo died tragically in 1974, however, after falling backwards out of a window, supposedly while playing the mandolin (his favorite past time), as sources claimed.

His son Bruno Lozionne emigrated with his mother in 1976 to the United States, and is currently living in Carbondale, IL, working as the senior office manager of Hardison Supply Co.

If anyone can send in more information on Matteo please feel free to add to this post.

[yourdailykitsch]

Is there going to be a shadowplay season 2?

Answer: I woulds say at this point the answer is no. You would think that if they were going to go forward with a season two it would be in motion already. It's not often that you would let that much time go between a first part and second part of a series. It was originally supposed to be a two part series, eight episodes in the first part, eight episodes in the second. For those that have seen season one, you know that the ending is left open for that second season. All I can say is that there was indication from the film company behind Shadowplay that they were starting to scout for filming locations for season two during the summer of 2020. Shortly after there was a Covid outbreak in Prague and things were kind of shut down. I heard nothing about filming the second season after that.

There may also be some other factors, one of the companies behind the project and funding was sold. Perhaps it wasn't as successful as they needed it to be to justify going forward with the second half.

Ask #2: Is Taylor finished filming his new movie in Canada?

Answer: He is still filming though they seem to be wrapping on Friday. He's still in Canada filming and has been for the past few weeks. He was at the Red Wings/Maple Leafs game on Saturday in Toronto and looked like he had a day off and went to Niagara Falls on Monday. I would guess he'll be there the next few weeks. It seems like they had the major players in the series filming their portion of the series separately. Uzo filmed early on back in August/September, then Matthew Broderick and now it seems like it's Taylor's turn.

[girlactionfigure]

The British Schindler

He saved 669 children.

Nicholas Winton was a young British stockbroker who rescued 669 Czech Jewish children from being sent to Nazi death camps. He never told anybody of his heroism, and the story only came out 50 years later after his wife found an old briefcase in the attic containing lists of children he’d saved.

Nicholas was a 29 year old clerk at the London stock exchange getting ready for a ski trip to Switzerland when he received an urgent call from his friend Martin Blake. Known to be passionately opposed to Nazism, Martin urged Nicholas to cancel his vacation and come to Prague immediately. He told Nicolas, “I have a most interesting assignment and I need your help. Don’t bother bringing your skis.”

It is a testament to Nicolas’ sterling character and strong moral compass that he didn’t waver for a moment. It was an easy decision to sacrifice his fun and relaxing ski trip and instead travel to a dangerous place on a mysterious mission.

Two months earlier, in October 1938, Nazi Germany had annexed the Sudetenland It was clear that the Nazis would soon occupy all of Czechoslovakia. When he reached Prague, Nicholas was shocked by the huge influx of refugees fleeing from the Nazis. In early November, the Kristallnacht pogrom occurred in Germany and Austria. Jews were killed in the street and hundreds of synagogues burned down, as well as Jewish-owned businesses. This horrifying event shocked the Jewish community in eastern Europe, and thousands were now desperate to flee.

Born to Jewish parents, Nicholas was actually Jewish himself. However, his parents changed their name from Wertheim and converted to Christianity before he was born. Nicholas was baptized and raised as a Christian, and he didn’t consider himself Jewish (although was doubtless aware that Hitler would.)

In Prague, organizations were springing up to help sick and elderly refugees, but Nicholas noticed that nobody was trying to help the children. In his words, “I found out that the children of refugees and other groups of people who were enemies of Hitler weren’t being looked after. I decided to try to get permits to Britain for them. I found out that the conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were chiefly that you had a family that was willing and able to look after the child, and fifty pounds, which was quite a large sum of money in those days, that was to be deposited at the Home Office. The situation was heartbreaking. Many of the refugees hadn’t the price of a meal. Some of the mothers tried desperately to get money to buy food for themselves and their children. The parents desperately wanted at least to get their children to safety when they couldn’t manage to get visas for the whole family. I began to realize what suffering there is when armies start to march.”

Nicholas knew something had to be done, and he decided to be the one to do it. He later remembered, “Everybody in Prague said, ‘Look, there is no organization in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go.’ And I think there is nothing that can’t be done if it is fundamentally reasonable.”

Nicholas decided to find homes for the children in the UK, where they would be safe. He set up a command center in his hotel room in Wenceslas Square and his first step was to contact the refugee offices of different national governments and see how many children they could accept. Only two countries agreed to take any Jewish children: Sweden and Great Britain, which pledged to accept all children under age 18 as long as they had homes and fifty pounds to pay for their trip home.

With this green light from Great Britain, Nicholas did everything possible to find homes for the children. He returned to London and did much of the planning from there, which enabled him to continue working at the Stock Exchange and soliciting funds from other bankers to pay for his work with the refugees. Winton needed a large amount of money to pay for transportation costs, foster homes, and many other necessities such as food and medicine.

Nicholas placed ads in newspapers large and small all over Great Britain, as well as in hundreds of church and synagogue newsletters. Knowing he had to play on people’s emotions to convince them to open their home to young strangers who didn’t even speak English, Nicholas printed flyers with pictures of children seeking refuge. He was tireless in his efforts and persuaded an incredible number of heroic Brits to welcome the traumatized young refugees into their homes and hearts.

The office in Wenceslas Square was manned by fellow Brit Trevor Chadwick. Every day terrified parents came in and begged him to find temporary homes for their children. Despite Nicholas’ success in finding places for the kids to stay, British and German government bureaucrats made things difficult, demanding multiple forms and documents. Nicholas said, “Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, ‘Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.’ This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits.”

The first transport of children boarded airplanes in Prague which took them to Britain. Nicholas organized an amazing seven more transports, all of them by train, and then boat across the English Channel. The children met their foster families at the train station and Winton took great care in making the matches between children and foster parents.

The children’s transport organized by Nicholas Winton was similar to the later, larger Kindertransport operation, but specifically for Czech Jewish children. Nicholas saved an astounding 669 children on eight transports. Tragically, the largest transport of all was scheduled for September 1, 1939 – but on that day, Hitler invaded Poland and all borders were closed by Germany. Winton was haunted for decades by the remembrance of the 250 children he last saw boarding the train. “Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling.”

Nicholas joined the British military and spent the rest of the war serving as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, attaining the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war, Nicholas worked for the International Refugee Organization in Paris, where he met and married Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary. They moved to Maidenhead, in Great Britain, and had three children. Their youngest child, Robin, had Down Syndrome, and at that time children with the condition were usually sent to institutions. However Nicholas and Grete wouldn’t consider it and instead kept their son at home with the family. Tragically, Robin died of meningitis the day before his sixth birthday. Nicholas was devastated by the loss, and became an active volunteer with Mencap, a charity to help people with Down Syndrome and other developmental delays. He remained involved in Mencap for over fifty years.

Humble – and perhaps traumatized by the children on the train he wasn’t able to save – Nicholas rarely talked about his wartime heroism and his own family didn’t know the details. It was only in 1988 that Nicholas Winton became widely known. His wife found an old notebook of his containing lists of the children he saved. Working with a Holocaust researcher, she tracked down some of the children and located eighty of them still living in Britain. These grown children, some with grandchildren, found out for the first time who had saved them.

The BBC television show called That’s Life! invited Nicholas to the filming an episode that became one of the most emotional clips in TV history. With Nicholas in the audience, the host told his story, including photos and details about some of the children he’d saved. Then the told Nicholas that one of those children was the woman in the seat next to him! They embraced, teary eyed, and the host announced there were more grown children in the audience as well. She asked everybody who owed their life to Nicholas Winton to stand up. The entire audience stood up, as Nicholas sat stunned, wiping away the tears.

After that, Nicholas was showered with honors, including a knighthood for services to humanity. Known as the British Schindler, he met the Queen multiple times and received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement, both for saving refugee children and working with Mencap to improve the lives of people with cognitive differences. There are multiple statues of him in Prague and the UK, and his story was the subject of three films.

Nicholas Winton died in Britain in July 2015, at age 106. Today there are tens of thousands of people who owe their lives to Nicholas Winton.

For saving hundreds of Jewish children, we honor Nicholas Winton as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Accidental Talmudist

[now-i-understand-that-reference]

I just remembered having this stashed somewhere in my library... It’s a movie dossier for Swing Kids (1993), featuring info about the cast, the production, and some nice colour photos. It’s pretty nice :)

Thought I’d share and leave a link to the pdf scan if anyone’s curious, but since the text is in French, I’ll leave a translation for the parts related to the production under the cut hoping that my knowledge of French is still enough after decades of not speaking it. I’ll leave out the historical background and the cultural information as you can probably read that online whenever you want :)

You can find the pdf here

PRODUCTION NOTES

From the rebellion to the participation

Jonathan Marc Feldman (screenwriter):

«Can a youth rebellion lead to an authentic revolt? This is the question I asked myself when learning about the existence of this protest movement, which was born under the nazi regime, and which was called The Swing Kids. These young people appeared to me as the symbol of the strength of the human spirit: if a revolt was able to express itself in such an oppressive context, are not all hopes allowed?»

Jonathan Marc Feldman’s script evokes the friendship between two seventeen-year-old adolescents, Peter Muller and Thomas Berger, both firmly determined not to enlist in the Hitler Youth. When circumstances beyond their control eventually force them to join the “JH”, the two boys claim they will resist their hold: they will be “JH” by day and “Swing Kids” by night. But is it possible to belong to a totalitarian movement without submitting to it with body and soul?

Robert Sean Leonard (Peter Muller):

«SWING KIDS begins in 1939, before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Peter, like many young people, does not have a sharp political conscience, although he guesses what is happening in the country. He is divided between the swing, which allows him to “have a blast”, and the pride of serving his homeland by submitting. These two temptations are equally powerful, and it is only after discovering the true nature of nazism that Peter will make the right choice.»

Christian Bale (Thomas Berger):

«SWING KIDS is also, and above all, a movie about friendship. Peter and Thomas make divergent choices that will gradually distance them from each other. Thomas does not resist the seduction of the Hitler Youth, he lets the Party’s ideology corrupt him and becomes a cog of the nazi machine. But in the end, the friendship that ties him to Peter will win.»

The origins of the project

After discovering the existence of the Swing Kids in an obscure historical review, Jonathan Marc Feldman undertook in-depth personal research and collected solid documentation about this movement. Passionate about the subject, he quickly communicated his enthusiasm to producers Mark Gordon and John Bard Manulis, who dedicated four years to the development of the script. «It was clear that it could have given rise to a great movie» Gordon points out, «it was a rare opportunity to make a historical movie that speaks to today’s young people» adds Manulis, who personally funded the development of the script. «The Swing Kids looked for their identity in music and dance, just like the following generations, and it was fascinating to observe the contrast between the social oppression they were experiencing and the - incredibly free - form of expression they had adopted».

Jonathan Marc Feldman:

«The young Germans were attracted by the swing because it represented a new, wild, radically original sound. The swing of the years 38-39 possessed a violence that we can clearly perceive in the famous “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman. Moreover, this music was strictly forbidden, for its Jewish and black origin. The mere fact of listening to it was a political challenge.

These young people were fervent anglophiles, who walked with an umbrella at any season, wore Anthony Eden hats, puffy trousers, Scottish coats. They dressed with great elegance and let their hair grow like Hollywood cowboys. Rejected and despised by the good Germanic society, they were the hippies and the punks of their generation».

To make SWING KIDS, Mark Gordon and John Bard Manulis chose Thomas Carter, prestigious television director, winner of several Emmies, who here signs his first movie.

Thomas Carter:

«I immediately liked the SWING KIDS script. It illuminates a reality that few people know. It is both the painting of a generation and the story of a teenager faced with a painful choice that will make him a man».

John Bard Manulis:

«Thomas Carter is very interested in history and how it repeats itself. He captured all the dimensions of the subject, its nuances, its emotional substrate, and staged it brilliantly».

Filming

Mark Gordon Carter, co-producer Harry Benn and chief decorator Allan Cameron visited five countries in ten days before picking Czechoslovakia. The movie was filmed in Prague and in the Barrandos Studios.

Allan Cameron (chief decorator):

«The centre of Prague, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is of great beauty. There are still cobbled streets, beautiful buildings spared from the bombings, remarkable textures and colors. Another advantage: the architectural diversity of the Old Town makes it possible to recreate almost any city in Central Europe».

The main sets of the movie were built at Barrandov Studios, which are among the largest in Europe. Founded in 1931, they offer technical means and financial conditions that seduce international producers: in parallel with the filming of SWING KIDS, Lucasfilm produced the series “Young Indiana Jones” and BBC produced a new version of “The Trial”.

Other big sets were built at Barrandov, and about sixty interiors and exteriors were made with the help of a small British team surrounded by many local technicians. An old 18th century riding school served as the setting for the scene of the Hitler Youth gathering; a residence in the embassy district became the apartment of Thomas’s rich parents; the Prague Library was converted into the SS headquarters and a vast theatre room was redecorated from the top to the bottom for the spectacular sequences of the Bismarck Café.

Casting

In parallel with the location hunting, Carter and his producers started the casting operations by selecting Robert Sean Leonard, one of the protagonists of DEAD POETS SOCIETY, for the role of Peter.

Thomas Carter:

«Robert is an outstanding actor, both for his gifts and for his modesty and availability. We couldn’t have made a better choice. I personally consider him one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with».

To prepare for the role of Peter, which required his daily presence on the set during the ten weeks of filming, Leonard began by reading several studies about Nazi Germany. «But soon I understood that my character had no knowledge of how the Third Reich operated. So I focused my research on the swing, by listening to countless recordings of the great artists of this era. This dance rediscovers the madness of the Twenties and anticipates the promiscuity of the Sixties. Very physical, it entails a huge expenditure of energy and demands great vitality».

For the role of Thomas Berger, the producers hired Christian Bale, revelation of EMPIRE OF THE SUN, and for that of Arvid, Frank Whaley, one of the main performers of Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS. Barbara Hershey (crowned in Cannes for SHY PEOPLE and A WORLD APART) was chosen to play Frau Muller, Peter’s mother.

The other performers were selected with special care, in Austria, The Netherlands, Wales and the United States. «The casting was hard and required a lot of work» concludes Thomas Carter, «I am particularly pleased with it, as it has allowed us to rediscover the emotional atmosphere of the time».

The swing

Robert Sean Leonard and Christian Bale devoted many hours to learning swing, under the guide of New York choreographer Otis Sallid, to whom we owe the dance sequences of MALCOLM X. Sallid recruited a group of Czech, English, American and French dancers, that he initiated with his assistants to the provocative rhythms of swing, jitterbug and lindy hop, and to the “degenerate” music of Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Django Reinhardt, censored by the Reich for reasons of “racial impurity”.

Jonathan Marc Feldman:

«We picked the most attractive compositions for a contemporary ear and those that the Swing Kids actually listened to, that I was able to find. Among the latter are forgotten numbers such as “Harlem”, which was very popular at the time. By working with Robert Kraft at the re-recordings, we attempted to capture the extraordinary power, vitality of this music. In its beginnings, the swing did not resemble any other form of music. Later, it became more civilized and disciplined, but in the late Thirties it was deeply subversive, captivating. Young people gave themselves to it completely, forgetting about everything else...»

[koreaunderground]

(2021/04/16) CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro

[nsarchive.gwu.edu][1]

  [1]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2021-04-16/documents-cia-assassination-plot-targeted-raul-castro>

# CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro

10-13 minutes

* * *

As Castro Retires on 60th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, National Security Archive Posts Declassified Top Secret CIA Cables, Reports from 1960

Agency Officials Willing to Pay Over $10,000 For ‘Fatal Accident’

Another Assassination Plot against Fidel Castro Was Part of Bay of Pigs Invasion Strategy

**Washington D.C., April 16, 2021 –** In the earliest known CIA assassination plot against leaders of the Cuban revolution, high agency officials offered the pilot of a plane carrying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “payment after successful completion of ten thousand dollars” to “incur risks in arranging accident” during the flight, according to formally TOP SECRET documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The pilot, who the CIA had earlier recruited as an intelligence asset in Cuba, “asked for assurance that in event of his [own] death the U.S. would see that his two sons were given a college education.” “This assurance was given,” his CIA handler in Havana, William J. Murray, reported.

According to TOP SECRET cables between the CIA headquarters and the CIA Havana station, and debriefings Murray later provided on "questionable activities," the plot quickly evolved after the Cuban pilot, Jose Raul Martinez, advised Murray that he had been selected to fly a chartered Cubana Airlines plane to Prague to pick up Raul Castro and other high-ranking Cuban leaders on July 21, 1960. When Murray informed his superiors at Langley headquarters, as he later told the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA, “headquarters cabled back that it was considering the possibility of a fatal accident and asked whether the pilot would be interested.”

The cable, classified “TOP SECRET RYBAT OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE” and signed by CIA Deputy Director of Plans Tracy Barnes, and J.C. King, the head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, informed Murray that “possible removal of top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQS” and asked if the pilot had “motivation sufficient to incur risks of arranging accident during return trip” from Prague. To provide sufficient motivation, Barnes and King offered $10,000, or “a reasonable demand in excess of that” as well as to arrange rescue facilities for the pilot after the “accident” took place.

Murray discussed the proposal with Martinez in a car as the pilot drove to the Havana airport to fly to Prague. “Subj willing to take calculated risk but limited to foll[owing] possibilities which can pass as accidental: A. engine burnout on take off to delay or harass trip. B. Vague possibility water ditching approx. 3 hours out from Cuba,” Murray reported to Langley after the meeting. “Subj rules out engine failure in flight due [to] imminent danger [of] fire and lack of opportunity to save any passengers or crew … Doubts ability perform real accident without endangering lives of all on board.”

After Martinez left for Prague, the Havana station received a second cable, signed by Tracy Barnes, that rescinded the assassination plot. “Do not pursue,” it stated. “Would like to drop matter.” By then, however, there was no way to reach the pilot. When he returned, Martinez reported to Murray that “he had no opportunity to arrange an accident such as we had discussed.”

This “accident plot” was obliquely described in the special Senate Committee report on _Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders_ , published 1976 after an investigation into CIA covert actions led by Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee report identified the plot as “the first action against the life of a Cuban leader sponsored by the CIA of which the Committee is aware” but withheld—or perhaps was denied—key details, including that the would-be assassin was a pilot and the “accident” would involve a civilian airliner. Nor did the Committee publish any of the documents on which its description was based.

The TOP SECRET documents were later declassified as part of the JFK Assassination Records Act and obtained by National Security Archive senior analyst John Prados for the Archive’s digital collection, _CIA Covert Operations II: The Year of Intelligence, 1975._

### The Bay of Pigs Assassination Plot

The Bay of Pigs operation also involved a complex CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, launched only a few weeks after the short-lived effort to kill his brother. In August 1960, the CIA’s director of covert operations, Richard Bissell, authorized what one SECRET EYES ONLY CIA memo described as “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action.” The mission “was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” As the top CIA official in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation, Bissell’s intention was to assassinate Castro and enhance the chances of success for CIA’s counterrevolutionary program to overthrow his regime.

In a filmed interview Kornbluh conducted with Jacob Esterline, the CIA manager of the paramilitary invasion, Esterline said that he had been asked to divert over $150,000 from his budget for unspecified reasons but had refused to do so until he was briefed by Bissel’s chief of security, Sheffield Edwards. After he learned the funds were designated to pay the mafia to arrange Castro’s assassination—using poisoned pills created by the agency’s Technical Services Division—Esterline protested to the head of the Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King. “I said, ‘J.C. do you realize that this is going to make people take this whole thing less seriously if somebody thinks there’s an easy way out with Castro being killed?’”

“I thought it was absolutely amoral that we involve ourselves for the record in anything of this sort,” Esterline told Kornbluh. “Number one, I was just having trouble coming to grips with that. But number two, I thought it would also be the most self-defeating thing for the operation which was going to be [difficult] at best.” (Peter Kornbluh, [_Bay of Pigs Declassified_][2], pp. 264, 265)

  [2]: <https://www.amazon.com/Bay-Pigs-Declassified-Invasion-Documents/dp/1565844947>

The Archive is publishing these records as the Castro era in Cuba comes to a formal end. As the Cuban Communist Party convenes its 8th party congress on the 60th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Raul Castro is stepping down from his powerful position as party leader. “Just as the defeat of the CIA-led invaders at the Bay of Pigs marked a historic turning point for the young revolution,” according to Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive’s Cuba project, “the official beginning of the post- Castro era marks a major turning point for Cuba’s future.”

## READ THE DOCUMENTS

[![document thumbnail][3]][4]

  [3]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616617/pages/1-p1-thumbnail.gif   [4]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616617-1>

1975-01-17

After the scandal about CIA efforts to assassinate foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro breaks in the media in early 1975, a former agent in the Havana station, William J. Murray, files a report to the agency’s inspector general on the earliest known plot in Cuba to kill a leader of the revolution—Raul Castro. Murray recounts how one of his recruited Cuban intelligence assets, a pilot, informed him on July 18, 1960, that he had been assigned to fly to Prague to pick up Raul Castro and other Cuban officials. After he informed CIA headquarters, Murray received an urgent, highly classified cable instructing him to offer the pilot $10,000 or more to motivate him to “cooperate in arranging an accident during the return trip from Prague.” The pilot agreed to “take a calculated risk but limited the possibilities which could pass as an accident.” In the end, no attempt was undertaken, and CIA officials rescinded the assassination instructions.

[![document thumbnail][5]][6]

  [5]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616618/pages/2-p1-thumbnail.gif   [6]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616618-2>

1960-07-21

Top officials in the CIA’s covert operations division sent this urgent telegram to their agent in Havana, William Murray, instructing him to encourage a pilot who is going to be flying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “to incur risks in arranging accident during return trip.” The CIA would offer $10,000 and meet “a reasonable demand in excess of that” once the accident had been completed. The cable begins by stating that “possible removal top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQS.”

[![document thumbnail][7]][8]

  [7]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616619/pages/3-p1-thumbnail.gif   [8]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616619-3>

1960-07-22

After conferring with the pilot just before he leaves for Prague, Murray reports back that “subj willing to take calculated risk” but limited to “possibilities which can pass as accidental.” The two discussed puncturing the tire of the plane to cause an accident, and even a real crash of some sort by causing engine failure which the pilot rules out because of “lack of opportunity to save any passengers or crew.” Among the options the pilot will consider is “vague possibility water ditching approx. 3 hours out from Cuba.”

[![document thumbnail][9]][10]

  [9]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616614/pages/4-p1-thumbnail.gif   [10]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616614-4>

1960-07-21

After the pilot has left for Prague, CIA headquarters sends a second, short, two-sentence cable shutting down the operation. “Do not pursue ref[erence cable],” it states. “Would like to drop matter.” The cable arrives too late to alert the pilot that the CIA no longer wants to advance the assassination plot.

[![document thumbnail][11]][12]

  [11]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616615/pages/5-p1-thumbnail.gif   [12]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616615-5>

1975-06-11

The official Rockefeller Commission appointed by President Gerald Ford to investigate CIA misconduct, debriefs William Murray on the 1960 plot against Raul Castro, as well as a more general discussion of the CIA’s role in encouraging efforts to overthrow Castro in the early 1960s. The memcon of the meeting records Murray as pointing out that “in many Latin American countries assassination is historically not an unusual form of changing government.”

[![document thumbnail][13]][14]

  [13]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616616/pages/6-p1-thumbnail.gif   [14]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616616-6>

1966-06-24

The CIA’s director of security, Howard J. Osborn, sends a detailed summary to the deputy director on the CIA-Mafia collaboration to assassinate Castro before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The history starts with the authorization from the deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, for “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” The report describes how Robert Maheu was used as a CIA “cutout” to approach mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Gold. It also describes how the CIA’s Technical Services Division “developed a pill that had the elements of rapid solubility, high lethal content, and little or no traceability” as an assassination device. Six pills were produced and passed initially to a Cuban official with mafia ties, Juan Orta. When he got “cold feet,” the pills were passed to a member of the Cuba Exile Junta, Anthony Verona, to pass to operatives in Havana. But, the report states, “Verona’s potential was never fully exploited as the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode.”

[seedfinance]

Drew Binsky on How He Got Started Traveling the World

Select’s editorial team works independently to review financial products and write articles that we believe will be useful to our readers. We can receive a commission when you click on links for products from our affiliate partners.

There are 197 countries in the world, and YouTube travel vlogger Drew Binsky has only two left to visit: Jamaica and Saudi Arabia.

His passion for travel began as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he had the opportunity to study abroad in Prague in 2012. It was then that he decided to make the world a priority.

He didn’t want to go into the company after college even though he had a degree in economics. When a friend told him about a program to teach English to children in a city outside of Seoul, he seized the opportunity. His experience in South Korea cemented his desire to travel: after teaching for two years, Binsky set out to visit every country in the world.

While teaching in South Korea, he started sharing his travel experiences on a blog called Hungry Partyr, which documented his travel and nightlife experiences. The blog’s success led him to launch a YouTube channel and a Facebook page in 2015.

A stroke of luck would help Binsky’s Facebook page and YouTube channel grow in popularity. In 2017, he made a video about a three-day guided tour of North Korea that went viral and received nearly 10 million views. After seeing the success in his video, he devoted his energy to creating more content for YouTube and Facebook.

Bring people together with YouTube

For Binsky, the appeal of traveling and sharing his story and the stories of others lies in emphasizing the common humanity between his viewers and those who are considered foreigners in distant lands.

“I have my heart in countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Turkmenistan, Iran, Lebanon – these countries that everyone is afraid of,” says Binsky. “And [my viewers] think it’s just a war zone and they think it’s so unsafe. But when you go there and meet people and connect with the human aspects of these countries, that’s really nice. “

Travel vlogging has not been an easy task for Binsky, and he stresses the importance of realizing that traveling to a new country can bring a number of unique challenges. He struggled to shoot videos in Libya and countries in Central and West Africa, for example, because people were more skeptical about being filmed.

“I love the challenge,” says Binksy. “And I love trying to overcome these struggles. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to share the best stories I can share.”

Binsky’s best budget travel tips

Binsky started traveling on a budget, but in recent years travel vlogging has become quite lucrative for him.

He now has 2.7 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 4 million followers on Facebook, and he makes money off of social media advertising, branded offers, and selling his own merchandise and an online travel hacking course. And he’s no longer a one-man show – Binsky has a team of 26 to help him produce content. His business is well on the way to hitting seven-figure sales this year.

Still, he believes that travel is easy and cheap when people are strategic. He recommends travelers in regions like Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Latin America to stay in low-cost countries and skip regions like Western Europe and Scandinavia, as well as countries like Australia, Singapore, and Dubai where travel costs can be higher.

Binsky suggests that budget-conscious travelers looking to keep accommodation costs down could opt for a hostel or use a service called CouchSurfing, which connects travelers with locals who offer free rooms.

For American travelers, Binsky recommends using credit cards to finance their trips. (International travelers can find it much more difficult to get approved for these cards.)

Choose a credit card that suits your lifestyle

Chase Sapphire Reserve®

reward

10x points for Lyft trips through March 2022, 3x points for travel worldwide (immediately after you receive your $ 300 annual travel credit), 3x points for restaurants including eligible delivery services, takeaway and al fresco dining, 1x point for every 1 US dollars for all other purchases

Welcome bonus

Earn 60,000 bonus points after spending $ 4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months after opening your account

Annual fee

Introduction of APR

Regular annual interest

16.99% to 23.99% variable

Fund transfer fee

Foreign transaction fee

Credit needed

Binsky is particularly enthusiastic about the Priority Pass Select Lounge Pass because it gives him access to lounges at international airports, some of which include amenities such as free massages, showers and sleeping accommodations.

Due to the flexibility of the award categories, he recently signed up for the Amex Business Gold Card. New cardholders can also take advantage of the Welcome Bonus: Earn 70,000 Membership Rewards® points after spending $ 10,000 on eligible purchases within the first three months of card membership. For him, spending on Facebook advertising is a high priority, so he can get four times as many points back in this category.

American Express® Business Gold Card

On the safe side of American Express

reward

Get more rewards with 4X Membership Rewards® points in two selected categories where you spend the most each month and get 25% points back after booking a flight with Pay with Points (up to 250,000 points back per calendar year).

Welcome bonus

Earn 70,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $ 10,000 on eligible purchases within the first three months of card membership

Annual fee

Introduction of APR

Regular annual interest

14.24% to 22.24% variable

Transfer fee for the credit

Foreign transaction fee

Credit needed

While the pandemic slowed Binsky’s travel habits for a few months between March 2020 and June 2020, he has been on the road again since June 2020, often doing Covid-19 tests and itching to complete his last two countries, which he plans to do in October.

For prices and fees for the American Express® Business Gold Card, click here

Note to editors: Opinions, analysis, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are solely those of the Select editors and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by third parties.

source https://seedfinance.net/2021/08/14/drew-binsky-on-how-he-got-started-traveling-the-world/

[mi4011nayaninarayana]

3. Gene Deitch

Story 1

Eugene Merril Deitch born on 8th August 1924 in Chicago, Illinois to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents. At the age of 5 his family moved to California and in 1942 he graduated from Los Angeles High School and got a job at North American Aviation where he designed aircraft blueprints. During World War II he served in the US Air Force, but was honorably discharged due to pneumonia in May 1944. Deitch was mainly influenced by Jim Flora and Walt Disney and has an interest in drawing from an early age.

Deitch started working at the animation studio, UPA as a creative director of Terrytoons and created characters such as Sidney the Elephant, Tom Terrific, Nudnik, Clint Clobber and Gaston Le Crayon. After getting fired from Terrytoons he established his own animation studio, 'Gene Deitch Associates, Inc' in 1959. The company was funded by William L. Snyder's Rembrandt Films who promised to fund Deitch next animation short 'Munro' on the condition that he relocates to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Originally planning to stay not more than 10 days in the Communist country at the time, Deitch met his future wife, the production manager for Munro, Zdeňka Neumannová and remained there for the rest of his life. As a result of their first collaboration Munro won the Oscar for the best animated short film. Around 1962 Deitch was involved in a reboot of a the classic franchise Tom and Jerry and later Popeye. As Deitch and his Czech crew didn't understand the appeal of the cat and mouse duo, it gave their version an unintentional surreal tone and his Tom and Jerry cartoons were considered the worst version made for years.

Deitch had the rare opportunity of being able to travel back and forth between the U.S. and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War and was even allowed to cross the border. Nevertheless Deitch was frowned upon by Czechs as well as Americans, who considered him a Communist sympathizer. He wrote down his memoirs in his autobiography, 'For the Love of Prague: The True Love Story of the Only Free American in Prague during 30 Years of Communism' (2002). At the age of 95 Gene Deitch passed away on 16th April 2020 in Prague.

[lokiondisneyplus]

The Czech Republic has issued new guidelines that will allow television and film productions to start up again immediately.

As with most of the world, almost all production in Prague and the rest of the Czech Republic was shuttered amid the virus outbreak.

But the Czech government on Thursday now announced studio backlots can re-open and shoots resume, provided they meet new hygienic standards.

These include regular testing of actors for coronavirus infection every 14 days during production and the maintaining of sanitation standards both on location and in studios. Foreign actors and crew members will have to show the results of a negative test before leaving their home country to be allowed to enter the Czech Republic. They will be given a second test within 72 hours of arrival and remain quarantined until they receive a negative result.

"In this way they can avoid the 14-day quarantine [which applies to other foreign visitors] which would severely impact film budgets," said Czech film commissioner Pavlina Zipkova.

Productions will be exempted from other restrictions, however. On-screen talent will not be required to wear face masks and production shoots will be exempted from government regulations banning gatherings of more than 2 people in one place.

The new regulations were drawn up by the Czech Audiovisual Producers´ Association in cooperation with the Czech Film Fund and the European Institute for Health and Safety in Film Industry. The Czech Film Commission has posted the new guidelines on its website.

Prague is one of the first territories to open up production following the COVID-19 shutdown, and the local industry hopes to quickly re-start several TV and film shoots that had to shut down during the crisis.

Amazon Studios has two major TV series prepped to shoot in the Czech Republic, the new season of Carnival Row, starring Orlando Bloom, and the upcoming epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan's best-selling books.

Marvel's Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a Disney+ original, was filming in Prague when the pandemic shut down production. Feature films that had planned to shoot in the country include Justin Kurzel's war thriller Ruin, starring Margot Robbie and Matthias Schoenaerts, the Netflix feature 473 Transatlantic and Danish period epic Margrete – Queen of the North, starring Trine Dyrholm as 15th century monarch Margrete I.

Travel to and from the Czech Republic could remain an issue for international crews. Prague re-opened its borders April 27 for citizens of the European Union, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and the United Kingdom but there are still travel restrictions in place for most non-Europeans. Many of those could be lifted on May 15. Zipkova was keen to point out that the restrictions are "only a recommendation, not a prohibition" and that exceptions could be made for international cast and crew.

The Czech government has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Prague introduced a state of emergency on March 12, after only 116 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, had been detected in the country. To date, the Czech Republic has recorded just under 8,000 cases of COVID-19 and 263 deaths attributed to the disease.

[sparkles-rainbows-severed-heads]

Nazi-Hating, Bisexual King, and German actor, Conrad Veidt (1893-1943) whose performances inspired the creation of Edward Scissorhands, Jafar from Aladdin, and The Joker, was a gem in real life. Be like Connie. Do it for him.

Here’s some information on how great he was:

https://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/41163268378/ten-reasons-why-you-should-love-conrad-veidt

“In honour of Conrad Veidt’s 120th birthday, let us present you with a list of reasons why you should love him. Because, let’s face it, he kicked more arse than you ever will. While wearing your great-grandmother’s dress.

1. He was an awesome actor who could hypnotise the screen in both the silents and the sounds. He could do amazing things with his body language, his eyes and his voice and move like an actual cat. Oh, and he was Method before it became popular. To the point where his friends and colleagues would get worried because his entire body language and way of speaking would change. He genuinely believed he was possessed by some greater spirit when he was acting. And it shows. 2. He was an amazing human being—everybody loved working with him because he was incredibly polite and jovial and charming, but he was even more amazing off the screen. Let us tell you why.

3. This guy starred in the first gay rights movie ever and played the first explicitly-referred-to-as-gay character on screen, and the first sympathetic gay character on screen. In a movie that said it was okay to be gay and that some people were just born that way. In 1919. The makers of the film and Connie himself were flooded with death threats from the far right. They would arrange riots in theatres and release gas and rabid rodents into the aisles. But the makers of the film stood their ground. Later, the Nazis tried to burn all copies of the film but over half of it still survives and a reconstruction can be seen here.

 4. Oh yeah, and this guy also starred in an early pro-choice film, had a high opinion on women (with some progressive views for his time, when the right to vote and to wear trousers were still seen as new and scandalous things) and was a fierce campaigner for human rights and a vehement anti-Nazi for his entire life. Speaking of which… 

 5. In the Thirties, he starred in two British movies sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. While still a German citizen. Hitler sent him personal hate mail, Goebbels tried to persuade him into doing propaganda films for the Nazis instead and he told them to go stuff themselves. This was after some of his Jewish and gay friends had already been killed by the Nazis, too, so he knew exactly the sort of danger he was in. Oh, and they imprisoned him and tortured him with sleep deprivation and put him on the Gestapo hitlist. Guess what? He didn’t budge. He never raised his hand in the Heil Hitler salute, once. And when, finally, the British authorities helped him escape to England, he never went back to Germany again. Also? Despite being Protestant, he identified himself as Jewish on official forms as a form of protest. In. Nazi. Germany. I’m sorry, but Conrad Veidt’s balls»»»>yours. 

 6. He spent a huge amount of money supporting the British war effort and personally smuggled people out of the hands of the Nazis. Including driving his third wife’s Jewish parents out to Switzerland in his car under the cover of night after much bribery and passport shenanigans. In the Forties, he participated in a fund helping fellow Europeans escape Nazis and settle in the UK and the US. One of the people he helped was his Casablanca co-star, Paul Henreid. By the time Henreid had reached the UK, the war was in full swing and he was treated as an enemy alien. Connie (who had managed to acquire British citizenship just before war broke out) personally rang the British authorities and vouched for him until Henreid could finally cross the Atlantic to safety (with some monetary assistance from Connie himself). So, kids, when you watch Major Strasser menacing Laszlo in Casablanca, remember this guy actually helped him escape the Nazis in real life. 

 7. While living in London in the late Thirties, he and his wife would regularly shelter war children at their house. When the air raid sirens came on, he’d rather run back home to be with the kids rather than stay safe at the studio’s bomb shelter. No, really. And even when he’d left for Hollywood in the 40s, he would do stuff like this for the poor kids of London huddled in bomb shelters. You might need tissues. 

 8. He was made of actual sex on and off the screen. He possessed an amazing, androgynous sexual aura that would take no prisoners. He could be feminine without being effeminate, seductive and possessing and powerful without being gruff or macho, incredibly catlike and soft without being weak. Despite being skinny as hell and 6’3” tall, he was as graceful as a dancer, gliding around so smoothly it was uncanny, slightly unnatural (when Disney were making Aladdin, they deliberately based the cartoon Jafar on his performance in The Thief of Bagdad and told the animators to make him glide like Connie did. Yeah, that’s right, Disney villains were based on him. No wonder. No, really, look at that). From the Thirties onwards, he was repeatedly described as pantherlike. He had a sensuous, cruel mouth (always a little more red and open and wet than it should have been in order to be decent), large, pale blue piercing eyes (oh yeah, he was well-read in hypnotism and occultism, so he is actually hypnotising and possessing you for real), finely manicured fingernails (sometimes filed into sharp points) and a voice to melt knickers off anyone within a five-mile radius. When he smoked, it looked like he was giving oral sex to a woman and a man at the same time. Watch A Woman’s Face, The Thief of Bagdad and Dark Journey for good examples of this amazing man’s slinking, slithering, purring charm. 

 9. Oh yeah, speaking of the off-screen sex… Merle Oberon said “he would have sex with a butterfly”, Anita Loos quipped “the prettiest girl on the [Berlin] street was Conrad Veidt” and he was a major gay icon in 1920s Germany thanks to the aforementioned gay rights movie and his androgynous looks and style. Let us remember this guy spent his youth in Weimar Berlin and its cabarets, a modern Babylon where “anything goes” was an understatement. Drugs, wild parties and sexual diversions of every sort imaginable were the done thing in those days. You were considered unfashionable if you didn’t dress in drag and experiment with bisexuality. In that, he was hardly different from his peers (like, for example, his good friend Marlene Dietrich). But then again… there were people who experimented and there were people for whom it was all a phase, but according to numerous sources, he was a natural, voracious bisexual and so in love with everything feminine he genuinely loved to dress as a lady. And apparently he would fall in love all the time, so the Twenties were… busy years for him, especially when his second marriage had started to fall apart. Just don’t ask what he did to Olivier. And according to a couple of sources, Gary Cooper. Oh, and his first wife left him after she found him wearing her dress (her loss). Most of the time, his friends would describe him as a ladies’ man during the day, and going after the men as well after he’d had a few drinks in the evening. He seems to have calmed down a lot in the Thirties after he found genuine happiness with his third wife and escaped the Nazis to the UK, but apparently he was still an incorrigible flirt with both sexes until the end of his life. If you think he looks seductive and deliciously perverse on screen, that’s all real and then some. So, yep, this was a guy who was a genuine saint and an amazing human being and a naughty, naughty man at the same time. How often do you hear of both sides coexisting in the same person? 

 10. He was, basically, the last lingering sigh of Romanticism as a genuine cultural movement. On screen, he played the Gothic, Byronic hero to the hilt (The Student of Prague being one of the greatest examples of the type). In the silents, he played degenerate dandies, tortured painters and pianists and violinists, cruel yet seductive tyrants, men haunted by their doppelgängers, possessed creatures wanting to crawl out of their own bodies, sleepwalking and twitching and writhing on the screen, turning everything into a dark, exquisite ballet. In the sound films, he turned that demonic energy outwards and would pin people down with his gaze as he cursed them, would undress women with a flick of his pitch-black lashes, would curl his long fingers around their arms in a sadomasochistic, erotic stranglehold. He never completely lost his accent, but he compensated for it with pitch-perfect softness and tone, speaking very slowly and quietly when everybody else would speak loud and fast. His voice in The Thief of Bagdad was compared to poisoned honey. The MGM bosses were surprised at the mountains of fanmail he received from women in the Forties, even if they had never given him a starring role, only supporting, villainous ones. And the ladies wanted this villain, oh yes. A woman moviegoer (presumably after seeing his performance in A Woman’s Face) described him thus: “Conrad Veidt has wicked eyes, a sinister mouth, strange hands and a half-man/half- woman quality about him. His walk is frightening. There is something not quite normal about him. And yet, he was totally fascinating, charming and appealing to me at the same time!”

So, there you have it. There are many more reasons to love him, but it would take forever to try and list all of them. I suggest you watch his movies and read up on him yourself, because he deserves to live forever.”