How to Survive a Dictatorship

Animated video portraits that I have made for a dictatorship survival guide made by the Iron Curtain Project.

‘How to Survive a Dictatorship’, of which the trailer you see above, was showcased as a part of the How to Survive a Democracy Pop-up Museum, a travelling exhibition on the political history of Europe’s turbulent twentieth century. The exhibition included a series of video portraits in which Europeans talk about the strategies that they have used to cope with life in a dictatorship. The Pop-Up Museum was an initiative by the journalist collective of the Iron Curtain Project and has been produced by Aldus’ producties.

I created animations that accompany two of these survival stories. Below, I show some excerpts and stills from ‘Don’t trust anyone’. This story is narrated by a man who has lived under Communism in Czechoslovakia. In my animation, I have let him take his survival strategy to the extreme of even being suspicious of objects at his home.