A Short History of Czech Film

The all to common comment that Czechoslovakia contributed nothing to film before the Czech New Wave in the mid to late sixties, is like saying American film didn't begin until the 1930s. More to the point is that Czech films did not feature as Academy Award regulars until The Shop on the Main Street won Best Foreign film in 1965. Yet, in the 20s and 30s, Czechoslovakia had an exciting avante garde movement and one of the biggest film studios in Europe with the Barrandov studios, built in 1931. Even when the communists nationalized the Czech film industry after the Second World War, it was as helpful to the industry as it was a hindrance. Under the communists, the Czech's organized highly competent production teams, improved the facilities at Barrandov, opened FAMU, the nations first film school, Kratky, the highly influential animation studios in Prague and its counterpart Zlin in Moravia, and developed Czech puppet film with the funding of the AFIT company. In comparison to the poor funding of Czech filmmakers today, filmmakers had it easy. That is of course if they stuck to social realism.

Another myth that needs to be exposed is that Czech filmmakers and the public had no access to Western film. They had little access to American films and films that promoted the American ideology. Films were screened frequently by the likes of Goddard, Bergman and Fellini. Charlie Chaplin was a big name in Czechoslovakia and in today's Czech Republic, he has a square near Barrandov studios named after him. This is interesting in the development of Czech film as an art form in comparison to Western film, which is widely put down as mass entertainment and inferior to both literature and the theatre.