About the event
On the evening of May 29, 2025, from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM, the Inner Neustadt Cemetery in Dresden will host a special screening of the documentary GOING TO ÚSTÍ, followed by an artist’s talk with Pastor Björn Fischer. The event, organized by Women In Remembrance Culture, invites the public to reflect on forgotten histories, cultural memory, and the role of art in dealing with the past.
The documentary follows Dresden artist Susan Donath, who has been engaged with sepulchral culture for many years. In this short film, she is accompanied by documentary filmmaker Valérie Madoka Naito as she takes care of a German-Czech grave in the Střekov Cemetery in Ústí nad Labem, which she has been tending as part of an art project since 2008.
About the Střekov Cemetery
The Střekov Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Ústí nad Labem (Czech Republic), is divided into two areas: well-tended graves of the Czech population and crypts of the former German population. This division is particularly evident on the western wall of the cemetery. In the 19th century, crypts were built there, most of which were sold or leased to the German population until the beginning of the 20th century. In the wake of political events – the Munich Agreement of 1938 with the incorporation of the Sudeten German territories, the occupation of Bohemia by the German Wehrmacht in 1939 and the Second World War – the German population was expelled after 1945.
For the cemetery, this meant that almost all German graves had not been tended or maintained by their owners since 1945. The cemetery administration took care of the graves on a temporary basis. To this day, the question of what will happen to the graves remains unanswered.
Additional information
Contact person:
- Valérie Madoka Naito (naito@wirc.network)
Websites:
- www.wirc.network
- www.naito.eu
- www.susandonath.com
- www.die-bilder-kommen-zurück.com
- www.neustaedter-friedhoefe.de
Social media:
Photos from the event
