Short Long Journey

Short Long Journey Synopsis

SHORT LONG JOURNEY maps Fedor Gál’s attempt to learn about the death of his father Vojtěch Gál, whom he never knew. The only lead Gál had at the beginning his journey was the information that Vojtěch Gál was murdered by the Nazis in the last days of World War II, on a death march from the concentration camp Sachsenhausen.
 
As Vojtěch’s son Fedor continues his search he finds survivors and witnesses from whom he learns how the Jews lived in Slovak settlements before the war, what Slovak nationalism and anti-Semitism grew out of, how the neighbours and friends of Slovak Jews experienced the deportations of Slovak Jews and the Aryanisation of their property. He talks to people who lived in the neighborhood of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and records the memories of eyewitnesses from villages on the long route of the death march.

SHORT LONG JOURNEY is part of an extensive multi-media project whose first part, the web pages www.kratkadlouhacesta.cz, was initiated in 2009. The pages were gradually brought up to date as more and more new videos were added depicting Fedor Gál’s progress on his journey to understand his father’s fate. With the extension of the journey, with the filmmakers finding ever more new information and important witnesses and coming to know the actual events, the idea to make a documentary film was born.

The book SHORT LONG JOURNEY, composed of a series of essays, reports and studies of the unsettling and incomprehensible connections, which the filmmakers met on their journey, came out before the film was finished in November of last year. Accompanying them on the journey was the outstanding photographer Miro Švolík who created a completely independent collection of compelling and distinctive photographs. These have become an integral part both of the film and of the book.