Czechoslovak film industry

This chapter focuses on first ten years of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. It explores the changing roles that the festival played vis-a-vis the Czechoslovak government's foreign and domestic policy, vis-a-vis recasting of Czechoslovak national identity, and vis-a-vis global economic,cultural, and political ambitions of the Soviet Union and the Soviet film industry.

This chapter aims to offer a model with which to compare the historical character of the various nationalized cinemas of East-Central Europe. The example of Barrandov Studios in the Czech capital of Prague provides my case study. The chapter pays particular attention to the manner in which day-to-day creative activities were managed within a system that designated the state the sole official producer, and to organizational solutions that were introduced in an effort to strike a balance between centralized control and creative freedom. I also focus on the ways in which such a mode of production operated within the historical realities of this production community, and on how its activities responded to institutional interests. I begin by sketching what I call the “state-socialist mode of film production”--which comprises management hierarchies, the division of labor, and work practices--through the example of Czechoslovak cinema from 1945 to 1990, and the systemic variations that it exhibited to other film industries in the region. There follows a description of “dramaturgy”: a system of screenplay development and creative supervision that was typical of both the Czech and East German production systems, and which serves to highlight the revisionist dimensions of my model. A further three sections reveal some important aspects of the “production culture,” which is to say a set of lived realities as they were experienced by workers throughout the professional hierarchy. The combination of these two approaches--one organizational in perspective (top-down), the other cultural (bottom-up)--enables us to read official production documents against the grain and to show that they offer limited accounts of what actually took place. Consequently, this chapter is able to shed new light on how production communities “internalized and acted upon” regulatory environments and institutional interests.

Tato studie zkoumá podmínky a sociální procesy vzniku autorství a stylu v konkrétních historických podmínkách — v době po zřízení takzvaných tvůrčích skupin. Ve dvou úvodních kapitolách krátce shrnuji hlavní výsledky teoretických debat z posledních 30 let (z velké části soustředěných na americkou a britskou kinematografii), které mohou posloužit k analýze průmyslového autorství a skupinových stylů v podmínkách československého filmu 50. a 60. let: problematiku autorských pozic a autority nad textem; roli producenta jako facilitátora autorství (spíše než autora v běžném smyslu); a nakonec otázku vztahu mezi produkčními praktikami a stylistickými normami. V navazující deskriptivně-analytické části studie pak tyto tři teoretické rámce uvažování o skupinové kreativitě aplikuji na vývoj tvůrčích skupin po roce 1955. Kladu si otázku, kdo byl v jednotlivých fázích jejich vývoje klíčovým hybatelem neboli facilitátorem (k pojmu facilitace viz níže) autorství a stylu. S tím, jak se pole filmové produkce postupně vymaňovalo zpod přímého vlivu pole politické moci, přesouvaly se tyto pozice z úrovně nejvyššího vedení zestátněného filmu až na úroveň skupin a jejich vedoucích; souběžně s tím se posilovala role konkurence uvnitř profesní komunity a z ní plynoucí diferenciace tvůrčích postupů. Vytvoření podmínek pro skupinový styl ovšem ještě neznamenalo jeho reálný vznik — kolem některých tvůrčích skupin a neformálních sítí spolupracovníků
se skupinový styl zformoval, kolem jiných nikoli (konkrétní důvody by bylo třeba prozkoumat v samostatné komparativní práci). Naproti tomu průmyslové autorství byl fakt daný držením autority přidělovat autorské pozice, čili trvalá vlastnost zestátněného filmu, respektive jeho výrobních složek.

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English Summary:

Industrial Authorship and Group Style in Czech Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s

The article discusses the conditions for group-based creativity and style in the state-socialist production system of Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 1950s and the 1960s. My aim is to describe the manner in which collaborative creative activities were organised under a regime which designated the state as the sole official producer. I will also look at the way informal social networks allowed distinct group styles to take shape. I focus on organisational solutions which were introduced in the mid-1950s in an effort to strike a balance between top-down centralized control on the one hand, and creative freedom as a necessary prerequisite for product differentiation on the other. I initially draw on recent theoretical discussions of group style and authorship as well as on my previous work, on what I call the “State-socialist Mode of Film Production”, which comprises management
hierarchies, and a division of labor and work practices. I then move to my example, Czechoslovak cinema after 1954, when so-called fi lm units were re-established in Barrandov Studios as part of the general decentralization of the rigid production system of the early 1950s (characterised by extreme social atomization and disempowerment of the production community). By focusing on
the early stage of the transformation process (1955‒1962), when the units ‒ practically substituting for hands-on creative producers ‒ were pushed to innovate and differentiate by building informal collaborative networks with young writers and directors, I attempt to uncover the social workings of group styles. The group styles are thus described in their nascent form, before they materialized into the first revisionist fi lm movement of post-WW2 Czech cinema ‒ socially critical and satirical movies of the late 1950s, followed by the so-called “New Wave” of the 1960s.

Raný zvukový film počátku 30. let před historikem otevírá bránu spojující kinematografii s dějinami dalších médií, protože jeho vývoj nelze vysvětlit z tradiční „monomediální“ perspektivy. Vyzývá nás, abychom film srovnávali s rozhlasem, gramofonem či populární hudbou. Dá se říci, že nástup zvukového filmu vyznačuje zrod paradigmatu současného masmediálního průmyslu a kultury, založeného na dominanci nadnárodních koncernů, na hladkých výměnách obsahů mezi různými mediálními kanály a na recyklování mediálních archivů.
Ústřední otázka této knihy zní: Jak se konstituovalo nové médium zvukového filmu v podmínkách meziválečného Československa? Tato otázka mediální změny implikuje řadu dílčích problémů: Co přetrvávalo z minulosti, a co naopak dosavadní vývoj filmu narušilo a otevřelo nové možnosti do budoucna? Probíhal proces změny stejným tempem a způsobem na všech rovinách média? Jak na změnu reagovali jednotliví aktéři filmové kultury a průmyslu, jak ji vnímaly elity a jak „obyčejní“ diváci, jak se odrazila v dobovém diskursu a jak v preferencích publika?
Nástup zvuku jakožto dosud nejvýraznější předěl ve vývoji kinematografie se ve filmové historiografii (nejen domácí) stal symbolem zjednodušujícího chápání dějinné kauzality, vztahů mezi technikou a společností a nakonec i samotného média. Vytvořil se kolem něj mýtus, který mediální změnu redukoval na činy několika výjimečných vynálezců a umělců a na působení hrstky přelomových filmů.
Tato kniha naopak chápe nástup zvukového filmu jako mediální změnu, která měla řadu vnějších příčin a proběhla paralelně v oblastech techniky, výroby, distribuce, kin i divácké recepce, a z její analýzy odvozuje teoretické i metodologické závěry pro mediální historiografii obecně.
Po teoretickém úvodu kniha nabízí analýzu hospodářských podmínek a důsledků nástupu zvuku v národní kinematografii. Dále se věnuje diskursivní analýze dobových představ o budoucím vývoji zvukového filmu. Ve třetí kapitole pojednává o tom, jak konec němého filmu probudil zájem současníků o minulost média. Po těchto dvou teoretičtěji zaměřených kapitolách následuje rozbor zavádění zvukové technologie do filmových studií, kin a laboratoří z hlediska patentoprávních vztahů. Pátá kapitola analyzuje takzvané jazykové verze českých filmů, jejichž hybridní kulturní identita slouží jako východisko k problematizaci tradičního pojetí národní kinematografie. Následující část konfrontuje zdánlivě přelomové události, které určovaly vývoj československého filmu ve 30. letech, s diváckými preferencemi, jež na opak vykazovaly tendenci k setrvačnosti. Předposlední kapitola zkoumá na příkladu hudebního „šlágru“ vztahy filmu k dalším elektroakustickým médiím 30. let, gramofonu a rozhlasu. Knihu uzavírá případová studie o technických médiích v Baťově Zlíně, která rekonstruuje jejich funkční propojení s průmyslovou výrobou, a reviduje tak zažité představy o nejprogresivnějším centru tehdejší české filmové tvorby.

The project of this dissertation is to investigate the way in which Czech animator Jan Švankmajer gives expression to the inner-life of 'objects' and 'things' in his film-work of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; although work from outside of this period will help contextualise the discussion. Through this enquiry we will establish the difference between what we might regard as an 'object' and what we might regard as a 'thing' within his work and question whether their animation expresses a response to the Czech political situation at the end of the Cold War. This practice of 'letting objects speak' will be understood within the terms of the surrealist movement (both in its French and its specifically Czech incarnations), universal animism, and Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection. My framework for this investigation will be 'thing theory', with particular consideration paid to the work of Bill Brown, due to the special attention afforded to objects within Švankmajer's films.

This essay explores the inner workings and power dynamics involved in story development in the history of Czech cinema. It focuses on the political history of screenplay development practices and formats, especially on the “Literary Screenplay”. This Soviet-inspired screenplay type was introduced to Eastern Europe in the late-Stalinist era to attract literary authors to write for the screen, to elevate the cultural status of the screenplay, and to facilitate pre-censorship. The primary means by which communist ideologues sought to reform screenwriting was the dramaturgy, organized in a complex hierarchy of dramaturgical institutions with the state or central dramaturgy at the top and “units” at the bottom. In the state-controlled system of production, the dramaturg or unit head supervising four dramaturgs was a close equivalent to a producer albeit without the usual financial, green-lighting, and marketing responsibilities, which were held by the state or by the Party and its representatives. The units oversaw story development, the selection of casts and crews, and, in some historical periods, shooting and post-production, and occasionally even distribution. This essay shows how uncovering the logics of institutionalized practices of collaborative creative work that took place under the influence of political forces can help us to make sense of the vast screenplay collections housed at Prague archives. The essay combines production studies and political history of the production system to reveal the differences between the production modes and the screenwriting practices of Hollywood and Europe, and between the Western and the Eastern halves of this continent. It is based on an analysis of 100 Czech screenplays from the 1920s to the1980s, and of records of their development, as well as on oral history and institutional history.

Na Barrandově se dnes natáčí víc zahraniční než domácí filmy, ale do roku 1990 tamní studio platilo za symbol a pomyslné centrum české kinematografie. Kniha, kterou držíte v rukou, je prvním pokusem o historii tohoto centra. Nezabývá se jen výjimečnými herci a režiséry, ale celým „světem filmu“, jeho organizací práce, vnitřním sociálním životem, nepsanými pravidly a konflikty s politickou mocí. Jak filmaři přemýšleli a tvořili v dobách, kdy si stát uzurpoval roli monopolního filmového výrobce a komunistická strana rozhodovala o kulturní hodnotě filmů i kariérách jejich tvůrců? Jak reagovali na nápad aparátčíků udělat z filmových studií továrnu, která bude vyrábět podle stejných plánů a norem jako těžký průmysl? Proč se komunistickému režimu nepodařilo nahradit filmové veterány novým typem proletářských „tvůrčích pracovníků“? Jaké změny v organizaci produkce umožnily obrovské mezinárodní úspěchy českého filmu a nástup nové vlny šedesátých let? Proč se na Barrandově dařilo vždy nejlépe ze všech žánrů komedii a jakou roli sehrála parodie v procesu emancipace filmového smíchu od propagandy? Na tyto a další otázky odpovídá kniha, která si za východisko volí každodenní zkušenost filmařů v zestátněných studiích, pod dozorem totalitní moci.

This chapter focuses on the ways in which foreign sound films were distributed, shown and received in Prague between 1929 and 1939. Comparing the popularity of Czechoslovak, American and German productions on the local market, it presents a list of each year’s top-ten hits, and draws conclusions about the short- and longerterm tendencies of local cinemagoing preferences. The chapter asks why the English language and American culture were considered to be disturbing elements by local audiences. What made German films not only more popular than American ones, but also more popular than German versions of American films? Was it the German language, which was more comprehensible to the local public than English, or the archetypes of German-Austrian popular culture represented in these films? How can we explain the extreme but short-term popularity of American talkies in the first year that they were shown in Prague, and their sharp decline in popularity in the following years? What kind of American films continued to be hits after 1930?

“We are not HBO, We are Television”: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Group Writing of the Series The First Republic

This article focuses on the efforts of the Czech public service television (Česká Televize, hereafter ČT) to compete with private companies for the primetime soap opera audience. The melodramatic historical crime drama The First Republic has been something of a turning point in post-Socialist ČT. It exemplifies a recent Czech tendency to coproduce programmes with independent partners, thus blurring the distinction between private and public interests. The series exemplifies a shift away from the longstanding Czech tradition of having one or two writers pen either six- or thirteen-part screenplays as one whole in favor of having a writing team collaborate on dozens of screenplays. The First Republic also illustrates the standardization of family entertainment as a ČT programming slot, as well as a greater effort to follow trends in American and, to some extent, European quality television. Through an ethnographic study of day-to-day production processes, this article sheds light on the social logic that drove this collaborative effort. More specifically, it focuses on the differing expectations and authorial subjectivities of the agents and institutions involved in the production of The First Republic. The initial conception of the series posited a complex, gritty historical drama, but this idea gave way to what many critics saw as a high-end soap. Shift s in power between ČT, its independent production partners (together with the series’ director), and head writer were symptoms of the changing position of public service television on the Czech market and ČT’s relationships with private producers. As the most successful programme of its kind, the series stands as a striking emblem of a post-socialist production culture in transition. Research for this article is based on Eva Pjajčíková’s experience as a writer intern on The First Republic, her nine-month participant observation of the writing team, and interviews both authors conducted with participants in the series.

"This article examines the re-evaluation and release/re-release during the 1980s of those Czechoslovak films of the 1960s that had, for political and ideological reasons, been banned during the period of so-called normalization – “vault films” as they are often called. It outlines the ways in which the banned films tended to be re-evaluated with the view to release/re-release them, placing particular focus on the period 1988-1989, on the initiatives of the Syndicate of the Czech Drama Artists (Svaz českých dramatických umělců, SČDU), and on the role of the special reviewing committee, that, during the spring of 1989, examined twenty-one banned films, including the highly “controversial” productions LARKS ON THE STRING (1969), ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN (1968), and THE EAR (1969). The outcome of the committee was a report that recommended that all of the films be released either theatrically or through other distribution channels. This decision had been preceded by several attempts to reconsider the status of the banned films. The release of banned films had first been proposed in 1981 by the Central Film Rental Agency (Ústřední půjčovna filmů, ÚPF), as a way of alleviating, for the exhibition sector, a shortage of films. However, this attempt, was by no means a part of the Communist government’s broader cultural policy, and therefore ended abruptly. A more systematic attempt came two years later. After having screened almost fifty films over a two-year period, one of the SČDU’s committees upheld the verdict that had previously condemned the films as anti-socialist. Instead of re-evaluating the films in any meaningful way, the committee had dismissed the cinematic output of the 1960s as a relic of the past that was of little interest and little relevance to the committee or to Czechoslovak society. The article shows that this negative stance towards the banned films continued to characterize the position of the SČDU and the Czechoslovak Communist Party even after the appointment in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, an event that initiated political and cultural reforms in the Soviet Union. The Czechoslovak Communist Party was highly reticent to embrace changes that were taking place in the USSR and began to adjust its position only after the accelerated transformation of the Soviet Union and other satellite countries had exposed the extreme and unsustainable conservativism of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The January 1989 demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, which ushered in a year of social and cultural unrest and change, marked a watershed moment with respect to the re-evaluation of the vault films by accelerating plans to reassess this “controversial” body of work and by re-positioning questions about the film heritage of the 1960s to the centre of debates about the transformation of Czechoslovak society.
The re-evaluation of the vault films from the 1960s was, as the article reveals, a high-profile cultural cause celebre during the transformation of Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1980s. Political and cultural tensions as well as tensions within the individual organizations that participated in the process of re-evaluating the banned films – the SČDU, the Czechoslovak State Film, ÚPF, and the Cultural Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party – converged around the issue of banned films as the diverse cultural, ideological, political, and economical agenda of those organizations clashed and competed with one another. The conflict between pro-reform and anti-reform forces, at a point in time at which the consequences of ongoing political, social, and cultural shifts still remained unclear, erupted visibly with respect to the vault films’ status as prominent cultural products. Moreover, for the SČDU, the issue of the banned films also provided a platform upon which the organization could re-define its stance, articulate its progressive politics, and showcase its internal transformation.
The re-evaluation of the vault films is thus not only an important part of the history of Czechoslovak cinema and of the institutional history of Czechoslovak cultural organizations, but is a key component of the cultural and political history of Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, and both a symptom, and a reflection, of the socio-political changes that were sweeping the country."

VYHNANICE AND ITS ROLE IN THE BEGINNINGS OF COLLECTIVISATION

In 1952, the directing team of Karel
Kachyňa and Vojtěch Jasný made the
feature-length film Neobyčejná léta
(Extraordinary Years), which focused
on the creation and development of
the Integrated Agricultural Cooperative
(JZD) in Vyhnanice, south Bohemia.
The picture became a model of
the use of propaganda on the road to
collectivising agriculture. The question
is how the small community
found itself in the view finders of the
young directors, how it got onto the
big screen. This study examines the
municipality in the normalisation era,
outlining the fates of its inhabitants
and the brutal change of its ownership
and social structures in the 1950s.

This chapter examines the political, cultural, and industrial conditions that supervised the Czechoslovak parodies, both industrially and culturally after 1945. The chapter opens with an overview of parody’s place within the various comedy traditions that characterized Czechoslovak cinema from the 1920s to today. The second section draws on the concept of the group-based creativity and authorship characterizing the State-socialist system of production in this country after a reorganization of film development and production took place in 1955. From there, in its third section, the chapter focuses on the case of the "Lemonade Joe" in order to explain that the revival of popular genre filmmaking was facilitated by this new kind of collaborative group-based creative practice, and to show how parodic techniques in this film exemplify a tendency toward the ‘autonomizationʼ of a parody canon; here, I focus less on the film’s director Oldřich Lipský than its writer and on-set creative ‘adviserʼ Jiří Brdečka. In the fourth section, the chapter is proposing that Czechoslovak parody occupied a quite distinctive historical position. With the texts and traditions it mocked largely absent from the public sphere, and in the absence of locally produced non-parody target genres, film parodies turned inwards, referring to themselves as constituting a distinct production trend.

The topic of the article is the development of so-called technical screenplays in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1954. Using statistical analyses of technical screenplays, we have been able to investigate the development of this type of document. USSR production norms were imported to Czechoslovakia after 1946. This fact affected, amongst other things, the practice of technical screenplays. Technical screenplays in this era became more closed off to dramaturgical modifications and also the form of technical screenplays changed. Although technical screenplays in Czechoslovakia were under the influence of USSR norms, they nevertheless preserved elements derived from the tradition of Czechoslovak screenwriting.

The state-socialist mode of film production was in fact a peculiar hybrid of local, regional and global models: it was prepared by the Nazi cultural politics (the idea of centralized "dramaturgy" which enabled ideological control) and Aryanization (which made the post-war nationalization easier). After 1945 and later, after 1948 (when Communists took power in Czechoslovakia), it further developed according to local (Bata shoe factory, inspired by American scientific management) and global (Soviet system, silently inspired by Hollywood vertically integrated studios) models. These three levels of organizational tradition - both in terms of production mode and work culture - persisted as mutually interacting ingredients of the state monopoly until the late 1980s and even on. The aim of the paper is to articulate a comparative model for historical analysis of nationalized cinemas in the region, using the Barrandov studios in Prague as an example. The key question it asks is: how was creativity and day-to-day production of films tactically managed in a system where the only real producer was the state? What organizational instruments had to be developed to balance the centralized control with necessary creative freedom?

An essay outlines the life and work of one of the few successful female film practitioners in the early years of the Czechoslovak Cinema - film director and scriptwriter Thea Červenková. It opens up still under explored area of female film pioneers in Czechoslovakia, their position and role within the film industry.

Nově dosazené autority hledali po potlačení Pražského jara novou podobu kulturní produkce. Návrat k socialistickému realismu inspirovanému produkcí první poloviny padesátých let se ukázal jako nesmyslný a propagandistické snahy se přesunuly do oblasti populární kultury. Oblíbené žánry jako komedie či muzikály, jejichž tvorba navázala na úspěchy šedesátých let, byly využity pro předávání hodnotových sad, na kterých chtěl nový režim stavět svou legitimitu. Období první poloviny 70. let je dobou hledání vhodného fungujícího modelu, ve kterém zatím spíše dominuje propagandistická složka nad zábavnou. Ve svém příspěvku se budu zabývat jednou z komponent normalizační ideologické nabídky - vlastenectvím či nacionalismem založeným na vymezování se vůči Západu a sjednocujícím obyvatelstvo utužováním sdílených auto a heterostereotypů vesměs přežívajících z rétoriky národního obrození. Analyzovány jsou filmy Muž z Londýna (1974), Hvězda padá vzhůru (1974) a další, které zachycují prosazovanou podobu normalizační hegemonie na příkladech emigrace, srovnávání aspektů života doma a v kapitalistické cizině i akceptování drobných domácích nešvarů v duchu rozvíjející se komunální satiry.

Necelých dvacet let po Vláčilově smrti máme možnost nahlédnout do velmi zeširoka a podrobně zpracovaného díla o jeho životě a díle, které nemá v české filmové literatuře obdoby ani konkurenci. Vznikl impozantní opus o 875 stranách, s více než 2500 poznámkami pod čarou a s 220 stranami vláčilovské dokumentace. Lektory publikace a jejími odbornými garanty jsou Zdena Škapová a Ondřej Koupil.

Methodologically, this essay is inspired by Janet Staiger’s conceptualization of the Hollywood Mode of Production, while also building on my own work on the ‘State-socialist Mode of Production’, which is to say the management system and division of labor utilized in Czechoslovakia and the other former socialist countries of East-Central Europe. This industrial perspective is combined with a critical cultural analysis inspired by anthropologically-based studies of film ‘production cultures’ (John T. Caldwell) and communities that utilizes diverse informal sources, such as oral history and (auto)biographies. It looks at how the top-down political and cultural reforms of the Czech film production system between 1948 and 1962 interfered with production routines and hierarchies of the local production culture, i.e. the lived realities of the professional communities. Two examples of failed top-down reorganizations that affected daily production routines are used as symptomatic cases, the first one ‘spatial’, the second one ‘temporal’: first, an experiment that attempted to change the Barrandov studios into an industrial factory integrating all production personnel in one place; and second, a project to forge a new generation of communist, or ‘proletarian’ filmmakers to replace the old ‘veterans’, who were supposedly corrupted by bourgeois ideology of the ‘immoral’ film world. The failures of the top-down reorganizations were due to the passive resistance of the filmmaking community. Both conflicts pushed the community to explicitly articulate its values of professionalism and creative labour (e.g., the so-called filmic qualities and dramatic structure of the script versus dogmatic directives of the socialist realism) in order to differentiate themselves from the young radicals and ‘dilettantes’.
This way, the chapter also raises a question of to what extent did these reforms come under the category of so-called Sovietization, or, whether they should be rather termed “self-Sovietization”, resulting in peculiar hybrids of adapted Soviet models with older domestic and German patterns.

This is the first ever international comparative study of the mythologies which popular TV series in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania – made before and after the fall of communism – disseminate in their societies. Comparison of samples of popular television from the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s provides strategically significant material about how these societies think and rationalize, and what their thinking is rooted in. The study proceeds from the premise that popular television series provide a fertile ground of investigation as mass media reflects and shapes social and cultural values.

This is the first ever international comparative study of the mythologies which popular TV series in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania – made before and after the fall of communism – disseminate in their societies. Popular television broadcasting has had an enormous impact on the general public’s beliefs and values, East and West. From the outset, the communist systems of Central and East Europe used entertainment television programming to instil the regimes’ values in the viewer. And indeed popular television still exerts a major impact on these fairly homogeneous societies.

Up to date research about current social values and factors in the formation of individual and collective identity has considerable strategic importance for decision making both in Britain and in the EU. If we are to understand how the populations of the Central and East European countries might react in the current relatively unstable political and economic situation, it is necessary to understand the indigenous political, social and cultural discourse in these countries. Comparison of samples of popular television from the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s provides strategically significant material about how these societies think and rationalize, and what their thinking is rooted in. The study proceeds from the premise that popular television series provide a fertile ground of investigation as mass media reflects and shapes social and cultural values.

"This essay examines the role that American independent distributors and the concept of “independence” played in strategies of Hollywood studios (represented by the Motion Picture Export Association, MPEA) and those of the Czechoslovak state-controlled film industry in their battle to take control of the Czechoslovak film market in the early years of the Cold War. It argues that American independent distributors became a discursive battleground for the MPEA and the Czechoslovak Film Monopoly. The essay combines analysis of primary documents housed in Czech and US archives and of Czechoslovak and American trade and popular press coverage to reveal that discourses of “independence” were mobilized rhetorically by the two organizations in an effort to protect their respective economic and political interests. The Monopoly, along with the Czechoslovak Ministry of Information and the MPEA linked notions of independence to communism and anti-capitalism, but in quite different ways. This essay thus reveals the extent to which notions of independence are deployed as part of political strategy, in addition to their oft-discussed commercial and cultural functions as markers of institutional, aesthetic, and thematic distinction from an imagined Hollywood mainstream.
The essay also expands our understanding of the relations between the majors and independents after WWII. It demonstrates that when it came to Hollywood’s attempts to overwhelm its competitors, political rhetoric was used to complement the economic power examined by Staiger and others. Discrediting independent distributors was bound up with Hollywood’s broader efforts to maintain control over the domestic film market and to dominate markets in Eastern Europe."

This is the first ever international comparative study of the mythologies which popular TV series in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania – made before and after the fall of communism – disseminate in their societies. Comparison of samples of popular television from the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s provides strategically significant material about how these societies think and rationalize, and what their thinking is rooted in. The study proceeds from the premise that popular television series provide a fertile ground of investigation as mass media reflects and shapes social and cultural values.

Příspěvek je shrnutím dílčí kapitoly disertační práce, ve které se věnuji technickým scénářům dlouhých hraných filmů v Československu v letech 1945–1962. Ve své disertační práci popisuji okolnosti institucionalizace technických scénářů po roce 1945, vývoj formální podoby technických scénářů a funkci technických scénářů v procesu výroby filmu. Cenzurní kontrola spadá do poslední oblasti a může nám pomoci nahlédnout do procesu kontroly vznikajících filmů v decentralizované filmové dramaturgii a produkci druhé poloviny 50. let. V dokumentech ustanovujících proces vývoje filmového projektu (např. Směrnice, organizační řády a jiná ustanovení v archivu společnosti Barrandov) se zmínky o cenzurních kontrolách neobjevují. Z literatury však vyplývá, že cenzura scénářů byla součástí tohoto procesu. Milan Bárta se ve svém textu Cenzura československého filmu a televize v letech 1953 – 1968 (Securitas imperii 10, 2003) věnuje kontrole scénářů Hlavní správou tiskového dohledu v průběhu 50. let přehledově a v obecných rysech. Mým cílem je prohloubit poznání cenzurní kontroly v oblasti technických scénářů, tedy posledních verzí scénářů před natáčením. Technický scénář hraného filmu byl jedním ze stupňů kontroly, spolu s literárním scénářem, servisní kopií a hotovou kopií. V příspěvku se budu věnovat tomu, jak probíhala kontrola technických scénářů, co jim bylo vytýkáno a s jakým odůvodněním (státní tajemství, obecný zájem, umělecká hodnota).

This paper explores the ways in which US marketers and distributors repackaged selected Czechoslovak science-fiction and fantasy movies upon their release in the 1950s and 1960s Cold War US market. By a way of comparison with the original marketing of the same movies in Czechoslovakia, it identifies some of the main strategies that marketers employed in order to sell politically and ideologically potentially controversial cultural product.

Drawing upon an extensive archival and popular press research, this study provides a detailed analyses of the Czechoslovak media reception of the 1947 House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings. By showing how what is seen as a strongly American affair such as HUAC hearings resonated abroad and was received and interpreted in a Communist state, the study contributes to several areas of early Cold War cultures and politics. It deepens our understanding of the early post-war film policy of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the role HUAC and particularly Hollywood played in its articulation. By extension, it also reveals the extent to which Hollywood (and US popular culture more broadly) as a concept and a mode of production was employed by Czechoslovak communist/leftist elites to articulate the program and mission of the fledgling state-controlled film industry in Czechoslovakia.

The original foreign film—its sights and sounds—is available to all, but the viewer is utterly dependent on a translator and an untold number of technicians who produce the graphic text or disconnected speech through which we must approach the foreign film. A bad translation can ruin a film’s beauty, muddy its plot, and turn any joke sour.
In this wide-ranging work, Abé Mark Nornes examines the relationships between moving-image media and translation and contends that film was a globalized medium from its beginning and that its transnational traffic has been greatly influenced by interpreters. He discusses the translation of film theory, interpretation at festivals and for coproductions, silent era practice, “talkies,” subtitling, and dubbing.
Nornes-who has written subtitles for Japanese cinema-looks at the ways misprision of theory translations produced stylistic change, how silent era lecturers contributed to the construction of national cinemas, how subtitlers can learn from anime fans, and how ultimately interpreters can be, in his terms, “traders or traitors.”

This is the first ever international comparative study of the mythologies which popular TV series in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania – made before and after the fall of communism – disseminate in their societies. Comparison of samples of popular television from the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s provides strategically significant material about how these societies think and rationalize, and what their thinking is rooted in. The study proceeds from the premise that popular television series provide a fertile ground of investigation as mass media reflects and shapes social and cultural values.

Monography on life and work of Czech documentary cameraman and director Jan Špáta (1932-2006). besides the text there is a as entire as possible the filmography and other apendixes. Published in Czech language by Malá Skála publishing, Prague. 444 pgs

The essay focuses on home video in 1980s Czechoslovakia. It shifts the attention from the popular conceptions of home video that posit state as a foil to a black market supplying citizens with western films like First Blood and The Terminator and pornography, and that foreground extralegal activities of those viewers who outsmarted the regime by gaining access to otherwise forbidden western culture. It shows that the state was invested in appreciating what home video might mean for state-socialist Czechoslovakia in terms of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. Divided into three sections, the essay opens with a consideration of how the State-controlled media initially conceptualized video as a scientific invention with enormous potential to enrich socialist society, derived from its relocating media consumption from the home to public arenas. From there, the essay focuses on the production of video content at Barrandov, before concluding with a discussion of the logics underpinning state-controlled distribution of home video. Based on research conducted in State archives and at Barrandov, analyses of the trade and popular press, and interviews conducted with key film industry figures, this essay shows how a new medium was adopted in a State-socialist country. Given the extent to which western scholarly and popular understandings of home video derive from the example of the United States, the essay reveals how a non-American film industry responded to the availability of Hollywood films on video. It also expands the limited attention home video has thus far received in studies of Czechoslovak cinema.

Konec čtyřicátých let a přesněji rok 1949 můžeme velmi dobře považovat za symbolickou tečku za svobodnou uměleckou tvorbou v československé kinematografii, kdy kromě Radokovy „Daleké cesty“ vznikl ještě ojedinělý film Vladimíra Čecha o silné ženské individualitě „Divá Bára“. Film „Daleká cesta“ českého divadelního a filmového režiséra evropského významu Alfréda Radoka představuje první pokus československé kinematografie o uchopení problematiky holokaustu. Jakkoliv se jedná o režisérovu filmovou prvotinu, autor se v ní projevil jako velmi schopný a zkušený filmař, jehož filmové umění v tomto díle poněkud paradoxně zcela s ohledem na nepřízeň společenského klimatu a cenzury, dosáhlo svého vrcholu.

The article focuses on the introduction of multiplexes to Czechia through a discourse analysis of articles in the Czech daily press related to multiplexing and government reports from the years 1996 to 2011. The text summarises the historical context of multiplexing in the West and theoretical works on multiplexing published to date. The subsequent part, methodologically based on the discourse analysis as delineated by Charles Acland, explores how multiplexes were constructed in Czech newspapers and reports published annually by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
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Text is dealing with segments of Czechoslovak documentary films in era of normalisation (1969-1989), that through social topics were critical to the regime. (Helena Třeštíková, Rudolf Granec, Fero Fenič, Jan Špáta, Josef Císařovský, Viktor Polesný, Pavel Koutecký, Olga Sommerová, Zuzana Meisnerová, Hana Pinkavová, Vladislav Kvasnička, Věra Chytilová...) but also Latvian director Juris Podnieks.