From left, Patrick Loughney, Packard Campus; Cultural Director Tomas Pernicky, Czech Republic Embassy; Czech Ambassador Petr Kolar; Librarian of Congress James Billington; and Grant Harris, European Division. - Helen Fedor
The Czech Embassy on March 27 gave the Library 70 Czech films on DVD, adding to one of the most important collections of Czech films outside the Czech Republic. The embassy in 1999 donated 73 prints of post-World War II Czech films to the Library.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington accepted the films from Czech Ambassador Petr Kolar, who presented the films on behalf of Czech Minister of Culture Karel Schwarzenberg and the Czech National Film Archive.
Accompanying Ambassador Kolar were Tomas Pernicky, cultural director, and Vilma Anyzova, head of the Cultural Section at the Embassy of the Czech Republic; both were instrumental in organizing this donation of films.
Representing the European Division at this presentation were Grant Harris, head of the European Reading Room, and Helen Fedor, reference specialist and the Library’s recommending officer for Czech and Slovak materials.
Patrick Loughney, chief of the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, was also on hand to accept the films for the Library’s film archives in Culpeper, Va., where they will be cataloged, preserved and made available for research.
