Fulltext search in archive

The study deals with the characteristics of Czech industrial film during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) on the example of the Škoda 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 Národní filmový archiv, Prague. In the case of Škoda, 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 Škoda 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 Škoda 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.

Review of book Carol Vernallis - Holly Rogers - Lisa Perrott, eds., Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics

Interview with American film historian and professor of media studies William Uricchio on the occasion of his lecture in the accompanying programme of the cross-media documentary projects section of One World 2015 in Prague.

This study is focused on unrealized screenplays written by the director Karel Vachek. It deals with nine extant texts of the screenplays: Hero Bohemia, Who Will Watch the Watchman?, Flying Unidentifiable Czech Objects, Czech Regurgitation and Romany, written in the 1960s, Bohemia Docta, written in the second half of the 1970s, What to Do? and Via Lucis, written in exile in the early 1980s, and the Members of the Revival movement and the Revival Movers and Communisum, written after the year 2000. The scripts are briefly introduced and the gradual transformation of their function is described in the article. Since the 1970s, Vachek had not emphasized the utilitarian function of screenplays, i. e. a direct description of images to be filmed. Instead, he was creating, as he himself called it, rather "over-texts", often composed of excerpts that served him as a space for reflection and thinking about selected topics. The main part of the study is focused on the significant formal uniqueness of Vachek's scripts: the interweaving of elements typical for fiction and non-fiction cinema. The methods of this symbiosis are explored, which allows to broaden research of Vachek's authorial poetics.

This article comprises an analysis and comparison of two film adaptations of the play Ubu roi by Alfred Jarry, made in Central Europe following the fall of communism in 1989 - one was shot in the Czech Republic (Král Ubu, F. A. Brabec, 1996), the other one in Poland (Ubu Król, Piotr Szulkin, 2003). The article explores the motivation behind these adaptations and how it is reflected in their structure and semantics. The significant reception Jarry's work had enjoyed in both cultures in previous decades appears to have been one such stimulus. Furthermore, the source had a potential for being an appropriate foundation for a metaphorical expression of current political and social problems as well as for post-modernist re-writing and variations. Finally, Jarry's play was attractive on account of its provocative nature and drastic humour, which had a potential of drawing audiences. The adaptations differ in the degree to which they stress each of these factors. F. A. Brabec transformed Jarry's play into a universal parable of warning, with a diversity of allusions referring to the state of Czech society at the time of shooting. The director pays equal attention to elaborate visual stylization of the film, while making occasional use of effects related to corporeality and sexuality, which can often be seen to be superficial and pandering. Piotr Szulkin's adaptation is a radically pessimistic reflection on the development and current situation in Poland and the entire world. The film has the form of an eccentric vision mixing elements of grotesque, dystopia, carnival as well as vaudeville. At the same time, it is designed as a complex structure based on repetition and variation.

Editorial of a new edition, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the National Film Archive.

Projection mapping is a visual process where a moving picture is projected onto the surface of real objects in a creative manner. This phenomenon started to appear widely in galleries and music clubs about ten years ago, but it has grown very quickly. Today's large-scale projection mappings are a common part of various brand campaigns and city celebrations.
The main objective of this study is to describe how the projection mapping style works. It considers four basic elements of projection mapping - moving imagery, sound, projected objects, and surrounding space. However, it focuses primarily on relations between moving imagery and projected objects. This is because projection mapping differs from other kinds of moving images by its object specificity. It is based on a precise bond between a moving picture and a mapped object. This bond need not be limited to the instances when the projected image is accurately visually adjacent to the shape and contours of the mapped object. Projection mapping can also draw on all historical, cultural, or social contexts of mapped objects in a similar way that site-specific art draws on the identity of a given place. Therefore, similarly to the adjective "site-specific", we could consider projection mapping as an object-specific cinema.
The work of the Czech visual group Macula serves as a case study. Specifically, it is their work between 2009 and 2014, when the main members of the group were Amar Mulabegović, Dan Gregor, and Ondřej Skala. As part of their projection mapping style analysis and means of expression of their mapping performances, I place their works in the context of other possible approaches and compare them with other authors' practices.

The aim of this paper is to uncover the system of actors who have shaped the environment of Czech documentary film and its transformation over the last ten years. These are major institutions such as television, The Czech Film Fund, festivals and institutions dedicated to the education of film professionals. The ecological perspective gives insight into individual aspects as well as the overall system. From this perspective, different parallels with life, relationships and sustainability in nature are emerging, which are becoming a tool for analyzing relationships in the media world. The ecosystem study of documentary film institutions relies on research into the environment through individual actors that are active in the system, are involved in a network of collaborative and exploitation relationships, provide direct insight into the environment and can determine its specificities and capture transformations (directors, producers, television or educational platforms). Through the method of oral history, we examined the relationship of respondents to individual institutions, whether and how they perceive them, how they (together) communicate, what constitutes their experience with them, and how it develops and changes, what are the reasons and tools of change. The picture of the environment of documentary film was constructed from interviews with actors and an analysis of a system of mutual relations.

The essay explores causality in producer relations, the definition and self-definition of the short film in Czechoslovakia in the 1940s and 1950s.

At the most general level, this article wanted to answer the question of what it requires to write an aesthetic history of Czech cinema. As such, it tried to sketch possibilities of a research project on a poetics of Czech cinema illustrated through an example of Czech cinema to the period around the opening of Barrandov studios in 1933. The poetics of cinema explores construction principles of film work regarding (a) their relationship to individual works and groups of works, and (b) their relationship to particular empirical conditions of the creation of these works in synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The article argued in accordance with these starting points that an internal cohesiveness of a research corpus is key for such a research project. However, Czech cinema represents a very diverse group of films. What is more, it is hard to decide what categories all the films fall into, let alone get a convincing corpus based on them. Yet, as was discussed in the first part of the text, if we define the research corpus based on a dominant language, dominant place of production and preferred distribution type, we can arrive at a logically consistent corpus of so-called regional cinema. In other words, it is possible to create a group of films that aim at functionally comparable goals. In the second part, the article began from the long-term perspective, by a polemics with such explanations of poetic approaches to regional cinemas in comparison to Hollywood cinema on the one hand, or international stylistic tendencies on the other. The first argument was that in the case of Czech cinema, in the 1930s studio requirements for systematic work and standard procedures were confronted with practices, preferences, and systems of norms from periods when filmmakers adopted them in an unsystematic way and with no externally prescribed standards. The second argument was that there were several parallel dominant systems of feature film norms in the 1920s that did not tend towards unification. They follow a different creative logic than in the case of international norms. The third part of the article came back to the question of the relationship between creative and studio continuities from a more short-term perspective in the analysis of the first film made in the Barrandov studios, Murder on Ostrovní Street from 1933. The article asked the following question: To what measure and in what ways is Murder on Ostrovní Street a project representing a stylistic continuity or, discontinuity, in its relation to films made in previous years? The text demonstrated that although the film was supposed to perform a variety of self-conscious film techniques, it did so in continuity with conventionalized practices of Czech films and filmmakers from previous years. The fourth part of the article, the epilogue, reflected from previous findings to more general reflections on how research into so-called Czech regional poetics can contribute to the overall knowledge of an aesthetic history of Czech cinema.

Information about the founding and activities of Kinema in the years 1913-1954. The subject of its business was the production, purchase, sale and rental of films, the manufacture of cinematographic equipment and trade in them, the provision of projection advertising, the establishment, operation and financing of cinemas, the publication of professional publications, the organization of lectures and other activities.

The article deals with the post-war fate of the film documentation of the extermination of Lidice, the efforts to present it in the prepared and unrealised documentary film by director František Sádek and the reasons why the film was not completed. The content of the print of František Sádek's preparatory film Lidice, a Czech village and examples of realised films with Lidice themes.

In Laterna magika's sixty-year-old history, a long list of well-known composers collaborated on its performances representing a broad spectrum of approaches both in terms genre and style. Given its relation and connection to some older types of theatre stage forms containing music, the creative work for this institution could be generally categorised as theatre music, however, its constitutive usage of film projection and related synchronization of music with film picture, fixed to a film copy, also connects it with film art. The resulting multi-media stage figure is (viewed from the perspective of music) mostly derived from the traditional forms such as ballet, opera, revue, musical comedy or scenic oratorio. In many cases, a strong inspiration by instruments of film music expression can be followed.
The beginnings of the artistic approach of Laterna magika's founders, Alfréd Radok and Josef Svoboda, could be found in their work at the 5th May Theatre (Divadlo 5. května), where they coworked with the conductor and composer Václav Kašlík. While early performances of Laterna magika in the fifties and sixties were based on the concepts of revue shows, from the seventies on, one can observe the shift towards dramatically integrated forms. These efforts culminated in the second half of the 1980s when noticeable inspirations by non-artificial music are observed in the musical approach. At the same time, a dramaturgical approach oriented towards increasing dance expression was asserted, brought even to the form of visually attractive ballet performances, which have prevailed from 1989 to the present day.
From the 1970s, in relation to establishing cooperation with the sound master Ivo Špalj, one can also observe a considerable development of work with the sound component, strengthened with the introduction of innovative sound technologies.
Among the specifics of the music work at Laterna magika, apart from the ones mentioned above, we can also include the exclusive use of reproduced sound, absence of a permanent musical ensemble, numerous uses of classical music (initially not intended for theatre purposes) or balancing the boundary between the worlds of artificial and popular music.

First half of 1930s was a period of radical changes connected with the introduction of sound technology. Due to these changes producers had to deal with various problems originating from growing production costs; Czech filmmakers had to deal with the lack of the financial sources and undeveloped market, local production was not usually profitable despite its popularity. When trying to overcome all complications entrepreneurs had to find their way to develop a sustainable production strategy - it usually included presales, specialised distribution practices and designing films with a chance for success in foreign distribution.
In presented text I will focus on the series of four multiple-language version films with comedian Vlasta Burian and made by the most important Czech production company of mentioned period Elektafilm. When watching these movies more closely we can see clear intention to adapt individual version for target market and public. All of four titles were made in coproduction with well-known foreign partners and in all of them starred Vlasta Burian who could speak Czech and German. Only for French language versions co-producers demanded to hire local, French actors. Analysed movies can be also seen as an example of how movies in contemporary Czechoslovakia were financed in mentioned period and how producers tried to overcome all limits of producing films in early 1930s. Even though there were different because of multiple versions, the importance of presales can be seen as an universal rule for all movies made during analysed period.

Interview with Sara Bozanic, Slovenian consultant and trainer in the field of transmedia, director of the Institute for Transmedia Design based in Ljubljana

The study aims to show the potential hidden in the original archive resources of the film industry companies and movies for the economic analysis of the Czechoslovak and Czech film industry in the 20th century in various ideological and economic regimes. The study answers three questions: * how can researchers use the film archive resources for the economic analysis of the film industry; * how can the film archive resources be used for the analysis of the economic decisions of film producers; * what were the economic costs of Czechoslovak and Czech movies from the historical perspective? In the first chapter the study analyses the structure and quality of the gathered data as well as the evolution of budgeting strategies of producers. Based on the collected archive sources, the second chapter provides the first analysis of the structure of financial sources of the three Czech movies - The Son of Mountains (Vladimír Slavínský, 1925), Rosina the Foundling (Otakar Vávra, 1945), and The Party and Guests (Jan Němec, 1966) - that were produced in various periods. At the same time, the second chapter deduces possible strategies used by companies for financing their movies. The third chapter analyses the financial cost of Czechoslovak and Czech movies. The analysis shows that the highest costs happened in the extraordinary last year of the Second World War, and then in the 1950s. With the only exception being 1974 and 1977, the costs in other years did not come close and fluctuated alongside a significantly lower level of today's average cost as declared by film producers. The study is the outcome of the research project "Kolik kdy stál český film", supported by the Czech Film Fund (no 1364/2016).

The brief period from 1948 to 1953 can be considered as the formative years of fairytale genre in Czech animated film. This study focuses on the dramaturgy of animated film studios, which were obliged to reorient their production almost exclusively to children's audience. For this purpose the conncetions between children's films and children's literature were developing after 1948. Scriptwriters as well as artists were recruited from the literary area and some of literary fairy tales were adapted as animated films. Especially the type of so called modern fairy tale was determined as the best option for film adaptation with regard to the goals of education and reeducation of children - modern fairy tales could served for articulation of actual needs of socialist cultural policy. The Apple-Tree with the Golden Fruit - Eduard Hofman's film from 1952 which tells the story about animals, to whom a group of Pioneers help to grow tasty apples - became the exemplary work of this tendency. This film combined fairytale narration with didactic popular-educational message and represent the intersection of most demands placed on Czech animated films for children after 1948. It was marked as the first succesful work of socialistic realism made in Czech animated film studios.

This article is focused on the multimedia phenomenon called Laterna magika, or more precisely on its screenplays seen as an alternative to mainstream film screenwriting and traditional play writing. I try to fill one of the blind spots in the history of Czech screenwriting by seeking for answers to very basic questions regarding the form of scripts and nature of their development. I argue that there were two basic models of text and writing: a) a convergent model of text and writing: demonstrated by examples of two main types of formats distinctively determined by theater and film conventions, so called literary-dramatic and technical-directorial formats, which at the same time stands for traditional verbal, linguistic kind of text and writing process; b) an iterative model of text and writing: represented by many examples of different, less conventional or completely unconventional formats and forms of expression of ideas about the future work, based on the crucial assumption made by Steven Maras (and many other leading scholars in screenwriting studies) that it is possible to link process of writing to other media, not just the page, and write by other means than words. Finally I suggest that the process of screenplay development should be understood as development of the complex software which was characterized by a combination of linear-sequential and dispersive-prototype approach, in which creative re/conceptualization of the future multimedia work fluidly continued during its execution.

This text focuses on the results of a study of production strategies of documentary films shown in cinemas in Czech Republic from 2012 to the 2016. The year 2012 is determined as the beginning of the monitored period because at that time the new Czech Film Fund was established; therefore, the state support of film industry was finally stabilized.
The analysis revolves around the relationships Czech production companies and producers have with all the (mostly public) institutions dedicated to documentary production, such as Czech Film Fund, Czech Television, and HBO Europe. For this purpose, a method based on semi-structured interviews with producers, economic/industrial analysis, and contextual analysis of documents dealing with the production process of Czech documentary films was applied.
Based on the analysis, it is possible to declare that Czech producers are dependent on the Czech Film Fund - only one of the producers could imagine how to make a film without its support. HBO Europe is perceived as a more respected partner for coproduction than the Czech Television and all the producers are aware of possible higher demands related with the cooperation with HBO Europe. Crucially, the producers realize that the most important thing is the film's subject matter, and therefore they do not adjust it to the requirements of the respective institutions, or even to potential spectators.

This text explores Lída Baarová (2016) by Filip Renč, a film that exceeds the limits of storytelling practices shaping views on female emancipation. Altman's semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to the genre frames the deconstruction of the film as an example of non-random cannibalization of narrative strategies and cultural codes. Introducing Renč's filmography sheds light on a specific set of intertexts for contextualizing Lída Baarová as mixing meta-cinematic farce and female bildungsroman. Examining Lída Baarová in the context of European meta-cinematic farce about female representatives of mass culture in fascist regimes aims to recognize the pathway of musealizing the totalitarian past. The comparison of Lída Baarová with Lili Marleen (1981), Marlene (2000) and especially La niña de tus ojos (1998) reveals the contest between multi-layered visual matches of Lída Baarová with these films and consistent deconstruction of the meta-cinematic farce in favor of reintroducing the binary distinction between us/them. Seeing Lída Baarová embedded in the formation of female bildungsroman directly addresses the role of the our/their dichotomy in building the Czech nation. Comparing From Subway with Love (2004) and Lída Baarová points to the intertextuality that interprets Lída Baarová as exaggerating the core of the master coming-of-age narrative. By juxtaposing meta-cinematic farce and bildungsroman, Lída Baarová determines the deconstruction of both units of cultural information and limited spectatorial pleasure from pedagogical emotions. Deconstructing Lída Baarová as a film crossing the borders between national and international narratives restores particular options for reengagement with sensitive issues of the post-socialist production and consumption of films.

The digitization of all preserved films by Jan Kříženecký, the so-called pioneer of Czech cinema, gave birth to filmic artifacts with uncertain media status. While they benefit from the crystal clear quality of HD video and many new options for variation and circulation, the decaying materiality of nitrate prints and negatives has not been effaced but made all the more visible. This paper aims to examine how this hybridity influences the aesthetic effects of the films, notably how it brings these films closer to a certain tradition of experimental found footage filmmaking that involves deformative practices and plays with the tension between figurative and material components of the film image (and the "crack-up" that keeps this tension alive). The alignment between Kříženecký's early cinematic works and found footage is highlighted to show how the deformative practices of experimental cinema and destructive operations of archival audiovisual documents are closely entwined. Furthermore, it also emphasizes how the hybrid materiality of the digitized artifacts and its unintentional infiltration into the figurative meanings of the films can make us see many ontological and epistemological problems of the film medium in a new light.

The introduction to the following convolume of correspondence between the directors of the National Theatre and the actor Hugo Haas in 1930-1935 sheds light on the actor's personality, his approach to theatrical and film opportunities, and informs about the then difficult situation of releasing actors for filming during theatrical engagements, etc.

The author uses the example of the Recono company to show that repairing film prints damaged by mechanical wear during projection and other atmospheric or chemical influences has been common since the 1920s.

Public service stipulations include the provision of content that informs and educates, helps imagine the nation, enriches the lives and culture of its citizens. Reality TV is one of the most growing, vivid and controversial genres in the contemporary TV broadcasting from popular culture, sports, lifestyle to arts or minorities. It's genealogy comes from documentary films, but today it is considered the bottom of the TV industry when compared to the artistic documentary film. But how has this trend of reality TV impacted on public service broadcasting? This article focuses on Reality TV produced by Czech public service television (Česká televize, hereafter ČT), the biggest (and only one) public services broadcaster in Czech Republic. The article focus on three examples: docusoap, living history a docu-reality. Research for this article is based on author's experience as a dramaturgist in ČT.

The study focuses on the form of dance in productions of Laterna magika from its historical beginnings up to the modern era at the turn of the millennium. Dance was one elementary elements present in multimedia productions of this experimental scene since the Expo World Exhibition in 1958 in Brussels. The dance changed its position according to a different creative starting points - from an insignificant mediator linking individual scenic elements through dominant role in the period of ballet productions at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, to the the total absence of dance in the era of so-called drama programs. Throughout Laterna magika's history, dance appeared in a variety of dance styles and formats: from revision motion sketches and pantomime etudes, through technically demanding dance figures as well as master de pas de deux. Dancer on stage worked as a useful linker or mediator between the film image and the living stage events. The study examines the intensity of the dance present on the stage, the way it is he developed a dialogue between the dancer and the film medium, what was the image of dance presented in film sequences of theatrical productions, to which relocations there was. In particular, it attempts to look at different conceptual starting points intermedia relationship of dance and film on the scene of Laterna magika.

Detailed information about the founding, activities and transformations of the Film Studio (FS) from 1934 to 1941, when the top public organization of the film industry in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia called the Czech-Moravian Film Headquarters (ČMFÚ) was established.