PT Journal
AU Slingerova, A
TI How Industry Has Employed Czech Cinema. An Example of Interwar Filmography by the Skoda Group
SO Iluminace
PY 2021
BP 51
EP 68
VL 33
IS 4
DI 10.58193/ilu.1717
WP https://iluminace.cz/en/artkey/ilu-202104-0003.php
DE industrial film; Czechoslovakia 1918-1938; Skoda; engineering industry; Czech production companies 1918-1938
SN 0862397X
AB The study deals with the characteristics of Czech industrial film during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) on the example of the Skoda company, former armory and then one of the key engineering companies of the interwar years. The resulting text is based on research into film materials preserved in Narodni filmovy archiv, Prague. In the case of Skoda, a corpus of preserved utility films is relatively large and diversified. This made it possible to focus on very specific modes of cooperation between industry and cinematography as a basis for certain general typology. The study follows three types of "work" performed by films for the Skoda company. The first one is the systematic documentation of the modern factory facilities, and thus creating and exploiting a new image of the company. This image was required by postwar development in various branches of peaceful production. The second research area is represented by the narratives about engineering products as bearers of the brand. Finally, the representation of the Skoda outgrew in several cases into the image of social significance of the modern industry as such. This basic framework can be compared with other similar examples of reciprocal relationship between industrial companies and cinema. On one hand, it could be considered quite typical. On the other hand, there are apparently important specifics, particularly linked to the simultaneous defining and stabilization of the state or dealing with the militaristic rhetoric traditionally tied to the engineering industry.
ER