Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: film opens with title card outlining story of Lidice, Fact2: eight-minute opening sequence interspersed with images and sounds of everyday life in community in Upper Swansea Valley, Fact3: Most of dialogue in section is spoken in Welsh, Fact4: German occupation is heralded in village of black car blaring military music and political slogans from loudhailer, Fact5: villagers resistance takes form of covert activities including publication of Welsh news sheet
Output (English): The film opens with a title card outlining the story of Lidice. It then moves on to an image of the stream running through the village of Cwmgiedd half a mile from Ystradgynlais in west Wales, and an eightminute opening sequence interspersed with images and sounds of everyday life in a community in the Upper Swansea Valley; men are shown working at the colliery, women engaged in domestic tasks in their homes and the inhabitants singing in the Methodist chapel. Most of the dialogue in this section is spoken in Welsh, with no subtitles provided. The section closes with another title card stating such is life at Cwmgiedd...and such too was life in Lidice until the coming of Fascism. The German occupation is heralded by the arrival in the village of a black car, blaring military music and political slogans from its loudhailer. Little is shown of the occupation itself, its violence being implied by a soundtrack of marching boots, gunfire and harshly amplified orders and directives, in the soundasnarrative technique Jennings had previously developed in Listen to Britain. The identity of the community is eroded, with the Welsh language being suppressed and no longer permitted as the teaching medium in the school, and trade union activity being made illegal. The villagers resistance takes the form of covert activities including the publication of a Welsh news sheet. Eventually, even the singing of Welsh hymns in the chapel is outlawed. The murder of Reinhard Heydrich, whose assassination Operation Anthropoid by Britishtrained Czech agents in Prague sparked the actual Lidice massacre, is the catalyst for the systematic obliteration of Cwmgiedd in reprisal. The children of the village are marched out of school and join the womenfolk as they are loaded onto trucks. The men, defiantly singing Land of Our Fathers as they go, are lined up against the wall of the village churchyard.