Czech Feature Film

Jan Culik's book analyses the value system constructed by Czech feature films produced since the fall of communism in 1989. It provides an overview of some three hundred Czech feature films made during this period. Over fourteen chapters, the book shows how Czech film makers have dealt with the legacy of communism and other traumatic past experiences, and how they have borne witness to recent political and social developments in the Czech Republic. In Culik's view, Czech feature film constructs an image of society which is still heavily influenced by the so-called "normalisation" regime of the 1970s and 1980s, which was created in Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion. Czech feature films bear witness to a society which suffers from fairly weak social and political structures. Many Czech films highlight the subordinate position of women in Czech society and project an image of impractical, inefficient, and aggressive men. In discussing the films, Culik uses the methodology of Cultural Studies, in which art is seen primarily as a specific kind of social communication within a certain cultural and historical context.

Šárka Sladovníková analyzes the depiction of the Holocaust in Czechoslovak and Czech Feature Films and the relevant literary pretexts. While she charts the social and cultural framework in which the films were made and how this framework changed, she also focuses on the cinematic language, the composition of and narration in each film (e.g., the depiction of the war and the Shoah as a narratively closed versus a narratively open event), genre aspects of the films (e.g., the use of comedy and humor), convention and innovation in presenting motifs and characters (the division of gender roles, the character of the “good German”). Particular attention is paid to the portrayal of stereotypes and countertypes in the films, where already well-known images, situations, and backdrops are repeated and which meet viewers’ expectations or, in contrast, which form countertypes and countersituations that go against the grain. Many of the films analyzed are adaptations of literary works. Therefore, this book is also a contribution to the rapidly developing field of adaptation studies.

In Czechoslovakia, in the 1960s, artists began to realize that the aesthetics of social realism contrasted with the realities of daily life; a movement of film arose in response to the politics and history of the nation. This work collects candid interviews with the creators of the Czech New Wave film movement (1960-2000). Their work put Czech film on the map of world cinema, generating two Oscars for Best Foreign Film, but the official critique marked them as decadent, pessimistic, and reactionary. The work contains sixteen uncensored interviews with filmmakers such as Jan Nemec, Jiri Menzel, Saša Gedeon, and Jan Sverak, who describe the struggle to realize their visions in a constantly shifting political landscape: from the mid-1960s, through the repressive "normalization" after the Soviet occupation in 1968 (more films were banned in 1970 than during the previous twenty years of Communism), and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The interviews give portraits of some of the most talented figures in film, revealing artists searching for individual and national identity, who describe living and making film in the Czech Republic now and in the past, explore how foreign films influence Czech film, and speculate on the future of film. Each interview includes a short biography, filmography, and list of awards. The work is bookended by essays giving background on the political and economic situations leading up to and after the Velvet Revolution.

This is an open access book. Media industry research and EU policymaking are predominantly tailored to large (and, in the latter case, Western) European markets. This open access book addresses the specific qualities of smaller media markets, highlighting their vulnerability to global digital competition and outlining survival strategies for them. New online distribution models and new trends in the consumption of audiovisual content are limited by, and pose new challenges for, existing audiovisual business models and their legal framework in the EU. The European Commission’s Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy, which was intended e.g. to remove obstacles to the cross-border distribution of audiovisual content, has triggered a heated debate on the transformation of the existing ecosystem for European screen industries. While most current discussions focus on the United States, Western Europe, and the multinational giants, this book approaches these industry trends and policy questions from the perspective of relatively small and peripheral (in terms of their population, language, cross-border cultural flows, and financial and/or symbolic capital) media markets.

Jan Aevankmajer wrote this remarkable book on tactile art when he stopped directing films after censorship by the Czechoslovakian government and experimented intensively with tactile phenomena and the creative imagination. Illustrated with over 100 images, the book is organised around many reproductions of Aevankmajer's wondrous tactile art objects, tactile poems, experiments and games. It also includes dialogues with, and artworks by, other collaborating artists from the Group of Czech and Slovak Surrealists. Aevankmajer also gathers together as contributors such notable exponents of tactual experience as Edgar Allen Poe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim, Ay-O, and F.T. Marinetti. Michael Havas, producer of some of Aevankmajer's films, says of the book: 'it is typically Aevankmajer: erudite and very consequential. Sometimes also very funny and erotic. Totally unique.'

This study of the most significant movement in post-war Central and East European cinema examines the origins and development of Czechoslovakian film during this time, as well as the political and cultural changes which influenced some of the most important works.