Image: Richard Termine for the New York Times

Zuzana Justman, Czech-American Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and writer, will discuss three of her major films: Voices of the Children (1996), A Trial in Prague (2000), and Czech Women: Now We Are Free (1993), parts of which will be screened during the talk. Moderated by Helena Fisera and Christopher Harwood.

Zuzana Justman was born in Prague and left Czechoslovakia with her mother for Argentina after the 1948 communist coup. In 1950, she left for the US to study at Vassar College. After graduating with a BA in Russian, she later earned a PhD in Slavic Linguistics at Columbia. She then worked as a writer, researcher and translator, and began to make documentaries. Her first film Terezin Diary (completed in 1989) is about the Nazi concentration camp where she was held for two years with her parents and brother. Her father died in Auschwitz. In 1993, Justman directed, wrote and produced Czech Women: Now We Are Free—a documentary about changes in women’s lives in post-communist Czechoslovakia. In 1996, she told the story of three people, deported at the age of twelve to Terezin camp, in her documentary Voices of the Children. The film received the 1999 Emmy Award for best historical program and other numerous awards and distinctions. In 2000, she directed, wrote and produced a documentary A Trial in Prague about a political show trial in Czechoslovakia in 1952. In 1996, Justman adapted and produced a play by her brother, Czech writer and playwright J. R. Pick (1925-1983), The Unlucky Man in the Yellow Cap, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Her semi-autobiographical play Waiting for Father, taking place in 1944 in Terezin and in 1954 at Vassar College, had a staged reading at the Czech Center in 2018. In September 2019, Justman’s riveting personal history article My Terezin Diary and What I Did to Write About was published in The New Yorker.

venue: BBLA at Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, 3rd Floor

Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $5. Seats are limited, on first-come, first-served basis. RSVP online through Eventbrite to reserve your seat.  

This event is organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) New York in cooperation with the Society for History of Czechoslovak Jews, with support of BBLA.

Zuzana Justman, Voices of the Childre (teaser)