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- Title
National Cinema in a Transnational Context.
- Authors
Klimeš, Ivan
- Abstract
This study focuses on the birth of national cinema in the region of Central Europe, which is multinational in character and, from a historical perspective, particularly unstable. The Czech lands alone belonged, over the course of the fifty years of existence of cinema, progressively to four states, each time with different borders. The author consequently distinguishes the phenomenon of national cinema from the institution of the state and places an emphasis on a stable territory with stable audiences defined by a shared cultural-historical identity. The concept of a cultural nation, however, (as opposed to a political nation) does not solve the problem altogether. This can be demonstrated with the still unclear position of film activities of Sudeten Germans and, for example, German production of Prag-Film from the era of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which continues to be ignored by Czech film historiography. It is the multiple alterations in state borders which, particularly after the First World War, dramatically influenced the fate of the regional centres of the emerging film industry. A number of these centres vanished (Lviv), some became important (Prague). This nationalistically ethnic grip on Czech film culture was opened up by, in particular, the migration of the workforce and viewers' experience with foreign productions, which contributed to the intermingling of cultures and influenced both the aesthetic ideal of the era, as well as social habits. Among those activities in the field of cinema which opened up the national environment, were co-production relations, developed in Czechoslovakia after the arrival of sound film in the production of language versions of Czech films. These relations were most intense with Germany and also partially with Austria. The phenomenon of national cinema in Central Europe consequently exposes a number of themes. It still reflects the 19th century with its concept of national communities based on language and ethnicity defining itself confrontationally against other communities, primarily on the basis of tensions between the German and Slavic nations. However, this spontaneously experienced trend, intensively bolstered by the journalistic and artistic culture, met with the increasing significance of the industrial expansion of the Czech lands, in which both Germans and Czechs participated together and which continued in the interwar period. This entailed vital business and creative contacts with the world as after all, the example of the interwar avant-garde, which was clearly cosmopolitan in nature, demonstrates that a national cinema as a purely enclosed ethnic environment will be incapable of development.
- Subjects
CZECH Republic; CENTRAL Europe; MOTION pictures; EXPERIMENTAL films -- History &; criticism; MOTION picture industry; MOTION pictures &; culture; MOTION pictures &; history
- Publication
Iluminace, 2013, Vol 25, Issue 4, p27
- ISSN
0862-397X
- Publication type
Article