Figure 1.-- The boy in the patterned shorts and white long stockings is the composer Vaclev Felix as a small boy of about 4 or 5. He is spending time in the country with his family. Put your cursor on the image to see the parade shot. It is the same boy aged about 11 years old at the Sokol festival in Prague, 1938. The boy and the girl are siblings and wear special festive drapery over their ordinary school clothes. The boy wears an ordinary dress-up suit with short trousers and long brown stockings. The girl wears a dress with white stockings. Their mother (in the middle) is dressed in a special ethnic Czech folk costume.

Another episdode, “One Stroke of Butterfly Wings”, shows various family scenes. The main content of the episode concerns the career of the composer, Vaclev Felix, who naively trusted the communist regime and subsequently became deeply disillusioned by his membership in the Party. We see little Vaclev Felix at about age 4 or 5 about 1929 in the rural village of Skokov where the family lived for about half the year to escape the stress and city confusion of Prague (figure 1). He is with his sister. Note the pattern short trousers and while long stockings. Later we see the family participating in a Sokol event. The Sokol Movement was physical (athletic), moral and intellectual training movement with a strong nationalist undercurrent. It was launched in the late-19th century when Czechoslovakia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and overt nationalist movements were prohibited. After independence (1918), they could be nore openly nationalistic. Here we see the family participating in an annual Sokol event. It was a tradition that contributed importantly (but unofficially) to the sense of Czech nationalism. The Sokol festival involved parades, and in this shot (Figure 1--put your cursor on the image). we see a boy and his sister wearing special festival costumes worn over their normal school clothes. Note the short trousers and brown long stockings of the period, just before the Nazi takeover in 1938, after which the Sokol was forbidden. Their mother is wearing a traditional Bydzov costume, reflecting the native folk culture.

Created: 12:41 AM 10/6/2009
Last updated: 3:31 PM 10/6/2009