History recorded on 8mm

As a child under the Nazi protectorate, Eva liked to listen to Radio Belgrade, on which the Nazis frequently played the song ‚Lili Marlene.‘ She imagined that her beautiful mother, whom everyone called Lili, was the girl under the lantern in that song, one of the most famous songs of World War II. Many years later in Germany, the writer of the song's music, Norbert Schultze, became Eva's father-in-law.

This is a story so unlikely that it probably would earn a low grade in a creative writing class. But the authors of the film ‚Tatíček a Lily Marlén,‘ [Daddy and Lili Marlene] which [was] shown on Czech TV 2 on Thursday, took the plot from life. It really did happen. The film is the second in an unconventional documentary series titled ‚The Private Century,‘ which will appear on televisions over eight Thursday evenings.

Reality shows without speculation

In their film, 70-year-old Eva Schultz-Spohr recalls a childhood marked by an unhappy relationship between her beloved ‚Daddy,‘ a Prague dentist, and the frivolous Lili. During the war, Lili left her family to run off with Walter, a Czech-German.

The productions feature one-of-a-kind footage from amateur film archives supplemented by eyewitnesses' recollections. Recordings of family rituals, reports of impressions from trips, and portraits recorded during parties or anniversaries provide scenes that peer into individual lives and their fates. Other episodes disclose the differences…