Ing. Jan Loučím

* 1949

  • “On the twentieth of August, which happens to be our birthday, we were with our brother-in-law and sister on the square in Slávie to celebrate our birthday. We were nineteen years old. We danced and so on. We got home at one thirty in the morning. Our sister and brother-in-law lived on Purkyňová Street and we lived on Dvořáková. We when got home our brother-in-law called and said: ‘Guys, turn on the radio!’ So we turned on the radio where somehow it being presented that we had been invaded (by the armies of the Warsaw Pact). What was left to do but hurry to get our camera at six in the morning, stuff it with film, and set out for the streets? In the spot where today there is a parking lot by the Pětatřicátníků barracks, by the post office, there were three or four Soviet tanks. Then these Soviet tanks were up (in the direction of) by (today’s stop) U Práce almost at Chodské (Square). So we took the tram with the camera and filmed the tanks which were sitting on The First of May Street (today’s) Klatovská Street, and then ran over to the post office. And there there was a tank that had a light... And my brother and I aimed our camera at the tank and that light was suddently on us. At that moment the tank started itself aiming toward us and my brother and I jumped behind the corner and here I have to say that that was the moment when our film on the events of sixty-eight came to end.“

  • “It started in seventy-one. We had no idea that they had taken our letter to our sister from Bo. Maybe he didn’t tell her or maybe she didn’t let us know. All of the sudden we could see the dark clouds gathering around us. One of our acquaintances told us: ‘Watch out, guys. You’re being watched.’ Even today I still don’t know if that acquaintance was an agent or not. In any case, after about two or three months we found out when a friend was called up to be interrogated that they knew everything. The worst part was that these StB guys, these agents, gave the information so exact and so convincingly, that it was hard to believe. When went to a bar, they knew exactly how many beers we’d had, how many times we’d gone to the toilet, who stopped by the table, and so on. The interrogations happened in September 1972, when they summoned us for an interrogation to the prison in Bory. I remember how mom, when she read it, how she prepared for us on the morning we went there – it was after some film contest in Cheb – some food so we’d be calm there and not get all fired up for some reason. Being just twenty-three-year-old boys we were a little energetic back in those days. We were seen by Koranda and Fremr. I’ll allow myself to say these names because I will never forget them. And I think it’s important that everyone hears these names. They were waiting for us in front of the gates to the Bory prison and then they led us, led us, led us. Then they knocked on one door, then a second one, then a third and then they took each of us to a different space. They didn’t stop asking us questions. It was interesting that as soon as we finished this interrogation, which lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, the doors open up and we saw their colleague, their superior. It was obvious that he’d been listening to what we’d been saying in the other space.”

  • “In 1972 my brother and I had trial for defamation of the republic abroad. It all happened when in 1971 we wrote our sister a letter saying that it made us angry that everything at home was so lame and how we would like to travel around the world. We handed this letter off to her friend Bo, while he was here on a visit. Whenever our sister or brother-in-law’s students or colleagues from Sweden traveled here for vacation, we showed them around the republic. We gave Bo that letter and of course our neighbor, an informer, Mrs. Malá, who, in the long years to come would bring about our being constantly interrogated and our home being searched, wasted no time in reporting that we’d had some visitor who drove a Swedish Saab, with Swedish plates. Thus they were waiting for him at the border, they took apart the entire car and found the letter. They couldn’t get the car back together again, so he had to take a train from the German border somewhere around Děčín back to Sweden, and he left the car behind there to rot.“

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Plzeň, 19.08.2019

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    délka: 02:00:34
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    Plzeň, 23.08.2019

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My brother has a cool brother

Jan Loučím, 1968
Jan Loučím, 1968
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jan Loučím, along with his identical twin brother Josef, was born on 20 August 1949 in Plzeň to an avidly communist family. After completing his high school studies in 1967, he took up a post in Škoda Plzeň in its computing center. During 1968-1973 he studied at the University of Economics in Prague. On 21 August, just hours after celebrating his nineteenth birthday, he and his brother filmed the tanks of the occupying armies in the streets of Plzeň till the moment when one of them aimed at them. From 1971 to 1989 he was faced with constant surveillance from the StB because of his sister’s emigration to Sweden. In 1972 he and his brother were charged with defamation of the republic abroad on the basis of a humorous letter critical of the political situation in communist Czechoslovakia. During 1973-1985 he worked as a mathematician and analyst in the computing center of Škoda. In 1974 he married, and after his wedding two children were born. In 1980 he had to again face interrogation by the StB, this time for the possession of anti-state press. During 1981-1991 he worked as an economist for the company Domácí Potřeby. In both this and his previous jobs he was offered better arrangements conditional upon his joining the Communist Party, but both times he refused. Starting in 1991 he began working for himself and started to dedicate his time fully to his film work, which he had been gravitating toward since his childhood. In 1991 he founded the first regional television in Western Bohemia and the television company, Studio Max. In 2009 he and his collaborators were awarded second main prize at the Arts & Film festival in Telč for the film Člověk z ráje (Man from Paradise) which dealt with the topic of his beloved Šumava. He is the author of numerous other celebrated films and television series. For his long term merit in the area of film production and documentary-making he was awarded the historical Seal of the City of Plzeň in 2019.