PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)
1968 was also a year of hope and change for the Eastern Bloc. The Russian leader Khrushchev had let go of the reins and and hippies and their values cautiously made their appearance even behind the Iron Curtain. In Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring was the symbol of the desire for liberation. In this period of a relative relaxation of repression the Czechoslovakian capital hummed with rumors. Everything was possible in the West; consumer goods were cheap and abundant, unemployment relief was higher than salaries in the East. The authorities turned a blind eye to contacts with the West through literature and radio broadcasts. But within the same year Soviet tanks put an end to the revival. All that was left were the photographs of the ‘Prague Picknick’, a performance about that short-lived sense of freedom which had flared up in 1968.
