I don’t look at what’s flying around, I do what feeds me. The 50-year series We from the end of the world

The Swiss co-production series, which captivated children and adults for thirteen evenings, was filmed in the entire eastern Giant Mountains.

The rest was shot in studios in Prague’s Hostivař. The shed at the end of the world has preserved its original form thanks to the sensitive approach of the current owners to the cultural and landscape heritage. Only the film extension, which was dismantled immediately after filming, disappeared.

The representative of one of the children’s roles, Yvetta Kornová, immediately recognized the place where she frolicked with Jurek, the son of the shed operators played by Jiří Máš, or with Zuzana Bydžovská after half a century.

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“Josef Bek, Zdena Hadrbolcová or world-traveling chef Martin Růžek had a wonderful approach to child actors. They knew how to do it with children. Bernardyn Bojar and Bary were lent by the couple to Semerák. We were one big family,” Kornová recalled.

“I remember fishing for trout in a mountain stream. They were easy to hold,” she added.

Kornová found the courage to watch the series immediately before she visited the location where the exteriors were created after fifty years. “I’ve never been a self-eater. The film Pilgrimage Came to Us was an exception. I found myself there. A circus girl with seven brothers. It’s a different thing to watch these films at the age of thirteen and now,” says the former child actress.

It’s a different thing to watch these movies when I was thirteen and now

Few people recognized Kornová in the meadow enclave of Severka. “I recently watched several episodes of the series. As a seven-year-old boy, unlike others, this series stuck in my memory. I stepped out to see where he was spinning. I would never have dreamed that I would meet Yvetta Kornová here. I wouldn’t recognize her anymore,” confided Milan Labuda from nearby Maršov.

Ludvík Ráža filmed the series for almost a year. The children had a distance from school. The teaching took place after filming at the Severka shed. The filmmakers filmed on roads impassable for most motorists today, and the actors flew over the mountains in outfits that would make today’s tourists freeze.

The director had to cut one of the main children’s roles from the script. The production was looking for a boy with natural authority for a long time. The assistant director discovered the boy in front of one of the Prague schools. Perhaps the son’s promising acting career was unwittingly ruined by his own mother.

She shaved the 12-year-old boy, whom the filmmakers chose because of his lush mane, bald and painted his head purple so that he wouldn’t wander off and go straight home after school. Vilda, as Nezbeda was called, was brought by the production staff to Luční bouda, where he was supposed to have a film premiere.

When the boy awkwardly took off his cap, Ráž was startled. The purple head contrasted sharply with the white snow.

“I saw a boy who lost his pride, from whom the punishment took everything, even his soul,” Ráž wrote in his memoirs. The natural leader of the children’s party disappeared from the script.

“A wig wouldn’t restore his lost pride. I explained it to him in a boyish way and I think he understood,” added the director.

Yvetta Kornová alias Žaneta returned to the filming location of the musical Přijela k nám pút

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