Iluminace 2020, 32(3):41-59 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1673

Club Members for Themselves. Film Club Functionaries in Uherský Brod, 1976-1989

Barbora Podškubková, Pavel Skopal

Masarykova univerzita

Film clubs created a specific cultural environment in Czechoslovakia of the so-called Normalization period of the 1970s and 1980s. Thanks to the extensive infrastructure of film clubs and grass-roots activity in their establishing and maintenance, areas outside large cities were also covered. The case study of the Uherský Brod film club made it possible to identify the functions that the clubs could perform for the functionaries who ran them in such a small city. It thus seeks to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the Normalization period as a specific social world characterized by a very unequal distribution of power, but at the same time enabling a range of actions and tactics to meet some of the goals and needs of millions of people. The Eigen-Sinn concept applied in the text makes it possible to monitor agency of the club officials in terms of their efforts to give meaning to their own behaviour in relation to authority - whether in accordance or conflict with ideological expectations on the part of that authority.
From the memories of the participating historical actors, it can be clearly reconstructed that they were motivated to take positions as club officials as an opportunity for satisfying and meaningful fulfilment in their free time. The act of founding the club and the work in its committee had a specific sense for the functionaries - a meaning which was clearly not in conflict with the "sense" that the club acquired for the authorities, but at the same time, far from copying it. The film club committee members did not face an either/or dilemma: they were aware that the local party body needed to show cultural activity through FK, and they still acted "eigen-sinnig" when they implemented their personal interests and ambitions. Their activities were by no means "oppositional" and to a large extent helped to maintain the legitimacy of the power system. The Uherský Brod club committee members tended not to defy established rules and mechanisms or test the limits of what was possible. There was no such thing on the horizon in the way they wanted to build a film club program. On the other hand, the "sense" of activity for the club was not forced on its functionaries - they created it themselves. Their club was neither an "island of freedom" nor a "gear of the regime." It was available both to the sense attributed by the local party body and to the sense implemented by any of the club functionaries themselves.

Keywords: film clubs, film club functionaries, normalization, Czechoslovakia, Eigen-Sinn, agency, state socialism

Published: September 1, 2020  Show citation