| Czechoslovakia 1968 | |
| Director: | Denis Sanders and Robert M. Fresco[1] |
| Producer: | Denis Sanders and Robert M. Fresco[2] |
| Music: | Charles Bernstein[3] |
| Editing: | Marvin Wallowitz |
| Studio: | Sanders/Fresco Film Makers for U.S. Information Agency[4] |
| Distributor: | Ocean Releasing |
| Runtime: | 14:36 |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Czechoslovakia 1968 (also known as Czechoslovakia 1918-1968) is a 1969 short documentary film about the "Prague Spring", the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.[5] The film was produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA) under the direction of Robert M. Fresco and Denis Sanders and features the graphic design of Norman Gollin.[6]
It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject[7] and in 1997, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been identified as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[8] [9]
In 1972, Senator James L. Buckley obtained a copy of Czechoslovakia 1968 to show on New York television stations.[10] The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright, objected to the broadcast based on an interpretation of the Smith–Mundt Act, which would prohibit the domestic dissemination of material produced by the USIA. Fulbright complained to the Attorney General, but the Justice Department refused to intervene based on the interpretation of existing US law. In 1972, Congress amended the Smith-Mundt Act, based on this event, to explicitly prohibit the domestic dissemination of materials produced by the USIA. The USIA was abolished in 1999.[11]