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John I. (Ivan) Pintar was born in Chicago in 1904. As a commercial entrepreneur in 1933, he moved to Zagreb, where he worked as the manager of an American chemical company since 1937. The communist regime in Yugoslavia arrested him in the autumn of 1946 and in early 1947 sentenced him to death in a show trial under charges of being an American spy. Thanks to the mediation of US authorities and the US embassy in Belgrade, his sentence was reduced to 20 years in prison with forced labour. After four years spent in jail in Lepoglava and Srijemska Mitrovica, and after the persistent efforts of the US Department of State and US Ambassador to Belgrade George V. Allen, he was released on December 4, 1950. Upon his return to the United States, he wrote and published a book on the communist regime and his prison experience entitled Four Years in Tito's Hell. He dedicated the book, published in Buenos Aires in 1954, in which he critically spoke about the Communist regime in Yugoslavia, to all victims of communism.

Lucian Pintilie (1933–2018) was a Romanian theatre and cinema director and screenplay writer. He was born on 9 November 1933 in Taruntino, now part of Ukraine. In 1940 his family felt Taruntino and thus, the young Pintilie finished his primary and secondary education in Romania. In 1951 he enrolled in the theatre directing department of the Ion Luca Caragiale Institute of Theatre and Film in Bucharest,. During his first year as a student, the Securitate contacted Pintilie and out of a “spirit of adventure” he agreed to become its “unqualified informer.” When Pintilie realised that he could not perform the assigned task of informer, he started to write reports containing “ridiculous denunciations” and complaints about “administrative shortcomings” in the student dormitories. In the same year of 1952 his father was arrested for eight months for political reasons (his membership of the Iron Guard). After his father’s release from prison, Pintilie put an end to his collaboration with the Securitate by courageously stating in his last meeting with the Securitate officer that: “I am a great director and never again I will dealt with such activities that can distract me from my creative work” (Pintilie 2003, 365–366). Following graduation Lucian Pintilie worked for a short period of time as a director at the Army Theatre and at TVR (Romanian acronym for Romanian National Television). Due to his rebellious spirit and frequent conflicts with the management, he lost his position at the Army Theatre. In November 1959 he also got fired from TVR as he refused to direct a show dedicated to the celebration of the October Revolution. Lucian Pintlie’s career was saved by Liviu Ciulei, another well-known Romanian director, who invited him to work as a director at Lucia Sturdza Bulandra Theatre. Here he directed a series of productions, such as Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun (Copiii soarelui, 1961), Teodor Mazilu‘s Proști sub clar de lună (Fools by moonlight, 1962), George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (Cezar și Cleopatra, 1963), Max Frisch’s The Arsonists (Biederman și incendiatorii, 1964), William Saroyan’s My Heart’s in the Highlands (Inima mea este pe înălțimi, 1964), I. L. Caragiale’s D’ale carnavalului (Carnival scenes, 1966), and A. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (Livada cu vișini, 1967). At the same time, Liviu Ciulei included Pintilie in his shooting team for the film Valurile Dunării (The waves of the Danube) and he also worked as principal assistant of another great director, Victor Ilie, in two of his film projects. In 1965 Pintilie was given a UNESCO scholarship for film directing in France and Italy and this opportunity opened the way for his career as a film director. His first movie Duminică la șase (Sunday at six, 1965) was received with mixed reactions as Pintilie intentionally downplayed the communist underground resistance movement during World War II in favour of the a love story between the two protagonists of the film (Caranfil 2013, 195; Nasta 2013, 86–87). The series of his banned artistic works began with the film Reconstituirea (Reenactment, 1969) and continued with his adaptation of Gogol’s play The Inspector General (Revizorul) in 1971 at the Lucia Sturdza Bulandra Theatre. Because he constantly refused any compromise with the communist censorship, Lucian Pintilie was forced from 1973 to work abroad as a film and theatre director. At the same time, he enjoyed a privileged status as he could travel freely to Europe and United States and return to Romania whenever he wanted. Due to his international success the communist authorities lured him with a new film project after an adaptation of Ioan Luca Caragiale’s play D’ale Carnavalului (Carnival scenes), which he had previously staged successfully for the Bulandra Theatre. The film De ce trag clopotele, Mitică? (Why are the bells ringing, Mitică?) was not passed for screening and it was shelved until August 1990, when it had its premiere. After the banning of his film, Pintilie continued to work abroad, returning frequently to Romania to collect information about Romanian dissident intellectuals, such as Dorin Tudoran, which he passed on to the Romanian desk of Radio Free Europe. After the fall of the communist regime, Lucian Pintilie became the head of the Film Studio subordinated to the Ministry of Culture and focused his carrier on film directing. As a result, between 1992 and 2002 he shot a film every two or three years with the help of Marin Karmitz, a Romanian-born emigrant producer/distributor from France. His successful film productions included Balanța (The oak) in 1992, O vară de neuitat (An unforgettable summer) in 1994, Prea târziu (Too late) in 1996, Terminus Paradis (Next stop paradise) in 1998, După amiaza unui torționar (The afternoon of a torturer) in 2001, Niki Ardelean, colonel în rezervă (Niki and Flo) in 2003 and Tertium non datur in 2006. A highly awarded film director, Lucian Pintilie supported his younger colleagues in Romanian New Wave Cinema, such as Stere Gulea, Nae Caranfil, Mircea Danieluc, Nicolae Mărgineanu and Cristi Puiu (Nasta 98–120; Rîpeanu 2013, 440–441). He passed away in 2018 at the age of 84.

Mariana Piskova graduated in 1977 in History with a specialization in Archivistics at the Sofia University. Between 1978 and 2000, she worked as a research fellow at the Archives and Documentation Research Center at the Archives Administration (today's Archives State Agency), as Senior Specialist and Deputy Director of the Central State Technical Archives. Meanwhile, she defended her dissertation at the Moscow State Historical Archives Institute (in 1984). M. Piskova has undertaken specializations at the Potsdam State Archive, the Berlin Film Archive, the Dresden Phototheque, the Austrian State Archive, the North Caucasian Federal University, Stavropol, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and Batumi State University of Georgia. Since 2000 she has been Associate Professor of Archival Studies at Neofit Rilski South-West University - Blagoevgrad and a lecturer at Kliment Ohridski Sofia University.

As a leading archivist and documentary researcher, M. Piskova enriches the history of archival work, with a particular interest in audiovisual documents and special (technical) archives. Piskova has made important contributions to the analysis of visual propaganda through socialism; the detailed presentation of weekly movie reviews as propaganda materials; the viewing of specific films from the socialist period such as the Soviet-Bulgarian co-production The Heroes of Shipka in a wide international context. Piskova’s research also focuses on the policy of the Bulgarian archives regarding the documentation of women and minorities, looking for answers to the following questions, among others: is there special treatment for them? are the acceptance criteria different? are there thematic guides for facilitating the work with such archival documents? have archive documents for women / minorities been published in specialized periodicals?
M. Piskova leads and/or participates in numerous regional, national and international scientific projects such as Digital Archives - Science and Information Complex, Places of Shared Memory - Digital Map of Monuments - Projects to the Science Research Fund (NSF) to the Ministry of Education and Science; Building a Digital Roma Archives for Southwestern Bulgaria - Sofia, To Come Out of the Shadow, Supporting the Social Integration of People Threatened with Marginalisation Caused by Their Nationality (2011-2013, Grundtvig Program), Politics of Memory Cultures of the Russian-Ottoman War 1877-1878: From Divergence to Dialogue - Marie Curie 7th Framework Program Project (2012-2016, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IRSES Marie Curie Action International Research Staff Exchange Scheme), Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in the Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, End of 18th - 21st Centuries (2017-2020), Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Rise (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange, among others.

Having achieved much herself in archive theory, Piskova applies this knowledge to her teaching - leading  thematic courses in Culture Studies, History, Archivists Studies as a lecturer at the North Caucasian Federal University in Visual Memory and History.

Mykola Plakhotniuk was born in the Kursk region of Russia in 1936, after his parents fled the village of Tykhyj Khutir near Kyiv with their large family, in order to escape the famine of 1932-1933. He was a medical doctor, a member of the sixtiers movement, a human rights activist, and member of the Kyiv Club of Creative Youth. He was arrested in 1972 and held for nine years in maximum security psychiatric facilities in Dnipropetrovsk and Kazan, institutions created by the KGB and known for practices of extreme isolation and near complete lack of prisoner rights. In 1978, Plakhotniuk was relocated to a regular psychiatric clinic in Smila in the Cherkassy region of Ukraine, where he was held alongside other patients who were committed against their will. There he was able to see family and friends, like Nadia Svitlychna, who visited him there before she left the Soviet Union for New Jersey, USA. After being released in March 1981, he was rearrested in September and sentenced in 1982 to four years in hard labor camps. 

Plakhotniuk enrolled in medical school in Kyiv in 1959 (which he completed in 1966) and quickly branched out into civic engagement, attending literary studios in 1962-63, where he was exposed to a number of young poets. In the dorms, a group of like-minded medical students formed, where they talked about language issues and other social problems. In 1963, he sent a letter to the Ministry of Education, requesting instruction in Ukrainian. Later that year, he organized a poetry reading at the institute, attended by Vasyl Symonenko, Mykola Vingranovskyi, and others. Shortly thereafter, Symonenko succumbed to injuries to his kidneys, suffered during beatings at the hand of the KGB. When Plakhotniuk organized an evening of poetry in Symonenko’s honour, he attracted attention to himself. He was called to a Komsomol meeting, where he received a warning but continued with his activism. In 1965 until his arrest in 1972, Plakhotniuk organized evenings of carolling, drawing in students from universities throughout Kyiv. During the first wave of arrests in 1965, he defended Ivan Svitlychny and Ya. Hevrych in an open letter to the editor titled “Behind them stands Truth.” He wrote several other letters in defense of others that had been persecuted by the state security services.

In 1970-1971, Plakhotniuk helped Chornovil edit the Journal “Ukrainsky Visnyk,” which chronicled these repressions. He also helped establish the tradition of gathering in front of the statue of Taras Shevchenko in the centre of Kyiv on May 22, the anniversary of the return of Shevchenko's remains to Kyiv, where a funeral mass was held prior to his repatriation to Kaniv. This tradition is maintained in activist circles to this day. In 1967, six attendees were seized and taken away with no explanation, prompting Plakhotniuk and several others to go to the Central Committee’s office building and demand answers. Because of this activism, he was arrested in 1972, along with many others. Plakhotniuk was sent to psychiatric wards twice, the first time to a maximum security facility. After refusing to sign a confession upon his release, he was sent to less punitive ward, which was even more psychologically taxing given the mixing of political prisoners with individuals suffering from psychiatric conditions. He was released in 1984, after which he worked as a doctor until his retirement in 1998.