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Book review by Lucie Česálková and Pavel Skopal Filmové Brno. Dějiny lokální filmové kultury.

This study deals with decentralization processes in the nationalized Czechoslovak cinematography, which took place in the second half of the 1950´s and the first half of the 1960´s. It contextualizes these organizational changes within the historical and political-cultural developments in Czechoslovakia and approaches them from two main perspectives: from the point of view of changes right in the top management of the Czechoslovak cinematography and in other organizational parts of the Czechoslovak Film and from the point of view of changes in the relationship between this film management and the superior Ministry of Education and Culture. The role of the ruling communist party is of particular importance, as they attached great significance to the influence of mass culture, especially film, and its educational function. The study also focuses on important persons associated with the management of cinematography in the monitored period and personnel changes that occurred as a result of the aforementioned organizational changes and political interventions. We aim to reveal the causes and circumstances that led to the abandonment of the strictly centralized administration of cinematography, which was based on the industrial model of film production (introduced in the early 1950´s), and to examine the effects of this transformation. Our study also focuses on the effects of these changes on the functioning of the cinema network and the influence on the distribution of films. From January 1, 1957, the administration of cinemas was transferred to national committees, which was supposed to bring simplification and efficiency of film distribution. We tried to find out what problems cinema operators at the time faced, how they dealt with the drop in attendance in cinemas.

Review of Lucie Česálková's publication: Atomy věčnosti. Český krátký film 30. až 50. let.

This study explains the popularity of animated advertising film in socialist Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s. It argues that animated advertising prevailed in the Czechoslovak socialist consumer and material culture of the early 1960s because it allowed to communicate a specific concept of goods and commodity fetishism within it, allowed to continue the cultural tradition of animated film in Czechoslovakia and benefit from its prestige both abroad, as well as in the internal domestic competition between the subjects of the advertising industry. At the same time, animation met the requirements of audiovisual advertising for changes in the way media content is consumed in connection with the rise of television, and last but not least, it has long been the preferred solution in discussions about the morality of socialist advertising.

This study explores the transformation of documentary formats and genres through online distribution and participation in the Czech Republic. Based on interviews with the actors of the documentary industry, analysis of the participatory level of specific documentary films (projects) and analysis of production strategies and programming of online television, it analyzes the extent to which new trends truly influenced documentary filmmaking in the Czech Republic. It focuses primarily on the degree of openness and permeability between traditional actors and institutions of the documentary industry and new actors or sub-disciplines, explores ways of collaborating and co-creating on digital documentary projects, whether and how the professional documentary professional community is changing, and how new impulses and practices influence the concept of what is perceived as "documentary" by the professional community. It focuses on three key areas - participatory projects based on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, interactive documentaries, and online television programming. In general, the study explores the thesis that the situation in the Czech "digital document" is influenced by the local tradition of documentary filmmaking and the market position of small national cinema in the wider framework of global media industries. In the individual subchapters it puts the situation in the Czech Republic into the context of more general foreign trends and explains it against this background.

The terms used to describe animation techniques and the form of animation itself have evolved over the course of history and changed considerably, resulting in the existence of synonyms, imprecise definitions, and loose and unanchored use of terms. Through understanding the history of terminology, one can understand the perception of individual techniques and animation in the domestic environment over the years, and the influences that have shaped their concepts and perceptions. This understanding facilitates orientation in the inconsistent use of terminology over almost a century internationally.

Based on a case study of a master class of foreign comissioning editors organized by Czech Television, the author reveals how the new production ideology of CT is shaped in the wider European context and how it is applied in the interaction between management and documentary filmmakers.

No other teaching tool received as much teacher's methodical attention as film, and examination of pupils' reception should help teachers to define specific strategies for its integration into teaching. Despite the authoritative conditions traditionally created by school institutions, teachers were concerned about the instability of the meaning of moving image. These fears in the 1950s and 1960s created a series of research into children's film reception within a pedagogical dispositif. The present study analyzes how the school's institution responded to political assignment under the conditions of state socialism, and, as a result, modulated the dominant modes of pupil's film reception. It shows that educators have developed two strategies for anchoring the meaning of the moving image, considered as unstable. Neither of them predicted that the film could work independently in the pedagogical dispositive. The first one, typical for the 1950s, was motivated by the ideological priorities of socialist education and aimed at framing the film with a number of didactic practices (preparatory reading for homework, introduction, discussion, follow-up tasks) and incorporating it into a system of other teaching aids. The screening was highlighted as a special event and the film experience should spread to the wider context of teaching. Within the second tendency, typical of the 1960s, on the contrary, the specificity of film screening as an event wiped out, film's mediality should be eliminated, and teachers aimed at endeavoring the film as a partial sequence, a "loop", a fragment, to the stream of teaching in which the teacher plays a key role. The pupils' reception in this regard points to two distinctive strategies, through which the pedagogical discourse copes with the problematic medium of the film - on the one hand, spreading the pedagogical into the public in the period of emphasis on the ideological interpretation of the film, on the other, the embedding of the film into the pedagogical in the period emphasizing the information potential of the film in the classroom.

The joint study by Lucie Česálková and Kateřina Svatoňová focuses on the specifics of Czech modernism and asks how the politically and socially complicated environment dealt with the tension between the need to saturate the audiovisual-haptic field with new technical, kinetic, dynamic images and attractions and the national revivalist tendency, which drew on the past and tradition. The research is delimited by two major events: the General Land Centennial Exhibition in 1891 and the Exhibition of Architecture and Engineering in 1898.

The presented study focuses on a remarkable phenomenon of Czechoslovak animated cinema. In the 1970s, Czechoslovakia witnessed a unique combination of two different worlds — amateur and animated film. Amateur directors of animated films could proceed directly to professional directing without obtaining a proper university film education or the need to undergo previous studio practice. This was made possible for five of them on the basis of their previous successes at amateur festivals and their unique artistic style. For these purposes, the text defines the term „direct professionalisation“ and explains its aspects. The study traces the directors’ entry into the professional sphere, their continuity or discontinuity with amateur work and the change in their creative styles necessitated by their work in state film studios. Besides the directors themselves, the study focuses on the figure who fundamentally made their professionalisation possible — Jan Poš, dramaturge of Krátký film, who maintained close contacts with the amateur cinema world, can be considered a broker according to the terminology of actor network theory. As described in this thesis, the process of so-called direct professionalisation did not only occur in Bohemia, but also in Slovakia. Around the same time, Rudolf Urc, also a dramaturg, was a broker there. His position is roughly comparable to that of Jan Poš, and it is possible that these professionalisation processes also occurred in other countries with state-socialist modes of film production.

In response to the digital transformation and the surge of commercial video-on-demand (VOD) platforms like Netflix, public service media (PSM) face the challenge of adapting while preserving their core values. While current studies predominantly focus on the adaptation process of the Western European PSMs, this research contributes a novel perspective by investigating the case of Central and Eastern European countries, specifically the Czech public service broadcaster Česká televize (Czech Television, CT). The emphasis on the role of the organizational culture within this institution shows the social nature of digital innovation. It complements the current scholarship focused on the outcome of the digitization of public service media. Utilizing a comprehensive approach, combining 39 semi-structured interviews and non-participant observations conducted from November 2020 to May 2023, the study explores how organizational culture shapes the imaginaries of the new version of the CT content platform, "iVysílání" (iBroadcasting). The findings reveal an initial tension between the "imported" culture of the new VOD staff and the existing more conservative culture of CT, leading to different imaginaries of the platform. Over time, there is a convergence of cultures, resulting in a compromised platform imaginary between a catch-up portal and a VOD platform. Indeed, it turns out that innovation cannot be brought to a successful conclusion without systematic (organizational culture) change management and clear vision articulation by top management.

Some filmmakers choose not to convey a narrative to their viewers, but to attack their senses directly. In this study, we will examine the experimental filmmaker Martin Ježek’s expanded cinema performance Our Purgatory (2021), which uses various techniques to target precisely this type of bodily and affective spectatorship. It is designed for three projectors and three screens, which can only be encountered in the form of a performance. For this reason, we will draw on the work of theater scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte, who has developed a concept of the aesthetics of performativity that offers a suitable theoretical basis for research on artworks as events. First, however, we have to come up with arguments as to why her thoughts can be applied to the medium of film. Using Fischer-Lichte’s notion of liminality, which she uses to grasp the transformation of the audience’s bodily and sensory experience through performance, we will then attempt to explore the various ways in which Our Purgatory modulates the perception of members of its audience. Our research question can be formulated as follows: what are the specifics of the audience’s mode of perception of the expanded cinema performance Our Purgatory and which particular — whether intentional, dependent on Ježek’s “sadistic” conceptualization, or completely accidental — elements condition this liminal sensory experience? In addition to Fischer-Lichte’s texts, the works of phenomenology and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze will also be relevant for us, as they will help us to grasp that mode of bodily experience that defies the order of signification. In the analytical part of the thesis, we will turn our attention to the visual components of Our Purgatory, working, among others, with the aggression of stroboscopy typical for structural film and the flash and freeze technique of spontaneous film, and to its chaotic soundtrack, and then we will explore the moment of intentional silence and darkness implemented in this film performance, which offers the potential for the emergence of a specific temporality.

The Sokol Physical Education Association, with its mass membership, with roots deep in the 19th century and high social credit due to the national content of its programme, became the largest operator and builder of cinemas in interwar Czechoslovakia. Of the approximately 1,850 cinemas in the country, Sokol owned about 40%, meaning that of the more than 3,000 Sokol branches, about a quarter operated a cinema. These were mostly rural cinemas and 80% of them played only once or twice a week. The article traces how in the 1920s the Prague Sokol headquarters tried to unite the Sokol cinemas into one gigantic association whose members would obtain films from rental companies exclusively through the headquarters. The idea of a massive, centrally controlled chain dictating the rental fees to the rental companies failed due to the weak interest of the Sokol units in the regions. Nevertheless, the Union of Sokol and Other Biographers was formed, operating on the cooperative principle, which brought together about a hundred cinemas and arranged films for them with the rental companies. Licences for cinema operation in Czechoslovakia were, with exceptions, granted only to associations, municipalities and other institutions, so the article also examines the phenomenon of the association cinema in general and the question of the whole licensing system inherited from the Austro-Hungarian era.

Book review: Jiří Anger (ed.), Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů (Praha: Národní filmový archiv, 2023).

Book review (André Stufkens, Joris Ivens. Filmmaker of the World. Thomas Waugh, The Conscience of Film. The work of Joris Ivens 1912-1989.

In recent years, visiting certain types of museums has become much more of an experience anchored in the mediality of the space. In a situation of gradual decline of the reach of traditional audiovisual media such as television or cinema, the museum appears as another significant platform for viewership. This shift is greatly aided by the popularity of immersive exhibition tools. The transfer of communication from objects (touchable or contextual) and dioramas to immersiveness increases the importance of bodily and emotional experience but also brings great challenges for some types of cultural organizations focused on the interpretation of history. The following article aims to provide with an overview of the use of immersive tools as part of exhibition design used in history museums. It does not reduce immersion to a digital device but rather presents it as an intermedial exhibition practice with historical roots and variability of use. Its current penetration into museum practice was made possible by the shift of museum institutions to edutainment and the influence of the so-called new museology. The article reveals that immersive exhibition design, a form of presentation working with physicality and emotionality, does not necessarily slide into manipulation but offers forms of polyphonic representation of history. The application of immersive elements in museum presentation can serve as a starting point for mediating materially unpreserved history or as a means for creating shared (inclusive) stories. However, achieving this potential requires elaborate screenwritting combining lines of knowledge and emotions, a varied educational plan and well-thought-out sequencing. At the same time, it also demands a different approach of the curators themselves – forcing them to think more about the polysemantic nature of objects, the origin of visual sources or the extent of information that can be carried.

An Introduction to a Special Issue.

The Japanese video game series Resident Evil is often cited as a prime example of the mukokuseki (“without nationality”) aesthetics due to its setting in the fictional world of the United States. Thus, the principal aim of this article is to explore within the broader context of Japanese culture and society, how the above-mentioned saga reflects a whole range of elements specific to the Japanese environment and even the personal experiences of its creators. The opening quote appropriated from the introductory video sequence of the first title, speaks somewhat pathetically about victims who “were apparently eaten,” thus reacting to the rhetoric of newspaper articles and the tradition of exploitation films. And yet, in a naturalistic manner, unburdened with the strict rating systems of the West. Divided into four sections (including a summary of previous research and theory), the article provides an analysis of the first three volumes of the series published between 1996 and 1999, illustrating not only manifestations of several concepts from Japanese aesthetics but also Japanese social conventions as defined by the renowned Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi. Within the broader framework of Japanese literary tradition and topicality, particularly from the point of view of narratology and with the help of “diaries” and other written records found in the game environment, it further demonstrates how these games either metaphorically or through transposition reflect some anxieties and fundamental social dilemmas of the Japanese society of its time. At the end of the last part of the trilogy, echoes of the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan at the end of World War II resonate almost explicitly. They also offer a starting point for new contemplations of this still-controversial topic.

This article primarily focuses on Václav Mergl's sci-fi films Laokoon, Crabs and Homunculus. With the help of theoretical frameworks of technological skepticism (or skepticism of the so-called Space Age), it interprets these movies, whereas significantly working with the considerations of Hannah Arendt, presented in her text “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man”. Since Václav Mergl takes his works to the level of relatively complex philosophical ideas, which he often expresses through images, this article also takes into account his independent artworks. However, it observes the artist's creative processes primarily in his films. The text focuses on humanistic and existential thinking about the position of man in the connection with scientific and technological progress. Moreover, the article also deals with the ways, in which meanings are created in the selected films through the genre (and aesthetics) of science fiction.

Interview with Charlie Phillips, who selects documents for the website of the British newspaper The Guardian. The interview was conducted on the occasion of this year's International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava.

This study explains the early career of the Czech film director Ladislav Rychman including forming his professional orientation, creative approach and features. Dealing with the transmedia directors concept, it analyses the Ladislav Rychman's way to making the first film musical in Czechoslovakia - The Hop-Pickers from 1964. Working on short and documentary films, advertising films, television entertainment shows and formats, music films and film musicals, polyecran projects, Ladislav Rychman transposed his creative know-how between culture industries, media and formats simultaneously during his longlasting career. The aim of the study is to reveal this transmedia transfer of institutional and stylistic practices in Rychman's career towards The Hop-Pickers.

Editorial to the thematically focused block of articles devoted to amateur film in the Eastern Bloc countries.