Introduce Yourself : Music to fight oppression by Thomas Hasler

Charlotte Jurda, known to her friends as Lotte, comes to Prague just before the outbreak of war to study at the university. Prague, the city at the center of Europe, has been for a millennium in the eye of the storm between the German and Czech cultures. Lotte meets Karel Hasler, a legendary balladeer and member of the Czech resistance, and thirty years her senior. They fall in love but cannot marry because of the Nazi purity laws. He is Czech, she is German. Lotte begs Karel to think of her and their as-yet unborn son, but Karel's uncompromising desire for Czech independence dooms their happiness. He is eventually incarcerated and dies at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, just a month before their son Tom is born. The (screen)play not only follows Karel's tragic journey, it also reveals to his young love Lotte the high price of liberty and the sacrifice at times required to protect the sanctity of independent thought. The film will be based on Lotte’s memoirs. Karel’s story is virtually unknown outside the Czech Republic; a film about his brave defiance of oppression should provide an example to other artists all over the world. Lotte’s memoirs make us realize that this love affair tells an important human rights story about the cultural milieu of pre-World War II Prague, where Czechs, Germans, and Jews lived and worked together in peace. This will be a Holocaust film with a difference – the victims are primarily non-Jews. Its focus on the love story should appeal to a female audience. Cabaret humor and Karel’s songs evoking “Old Prague” provide a lighter touch. The film has the potential to be compared to Schindler’s List, The Sound of Music, Cabaret, or Casablanca. Although Karel is known in the Czech Republic mostly for his songs of “Old Prague,” he also wrote songs on political themes, particularly against oppression. His most famous song, “Our Czech Song,” presages the German invasion and motivated the Czechs to resist the occupation. It became the unofficial national anthem when the Nazis banned the official anthem, and continues to be a favorite song of Czech-Americans. In 2006, at the suggestion of the late Arnost Lustig, a Holocaust survivor and author of many books about the Holocaust, a documentary was made about The Immortal Balladeer of Prague/ Arnost’s son Pepi Lustig was co-director. Peter Sever has written a play about the story and we are seeking an opportunity for a staged reading. A trailer is in the works to promote the making of a movie.