Czech Feature Film since 1989: The Context:

1
Czech Feature Film since 1989 The Context

• The 1960s "Czech New Wave"
• Post-1968 Russian invasion clampdown purge of
  filmmakers
• 1970-1989 propaganda, escapism, films for
  children

2
After the fall of communism

• Czech film industry denationalised
• First, "primitive" commercial films made
• Later, more artistically ambitious projects
• Banned film-makers from the 1960s did not gain
  prominence again in the 1990s
• New generation of thirty-year-olds
• Some 280 features made in 1989-2007
• Maybe 40 will survive as works of art
• Dvorák "Czech cinema is manipulative".

3
Contemporary Czech Cinema

• Useful to study it as material culture
• Czech film transmits a unified value system
• Is this a mythology or does it reflect reality?
• What do the sociologists say?

4
What is contemporary Czech society like?

• Sociologists
• No fair principles of remuneration yet
• Low salaries for highly educated professionals
  in the state sector
• Subjective euforic feeling after fall of
  communism not matched by reality
• No substantial middle class yet
• Czech society as a plebeian community

5
What the Czechs believe

• Sociologists
• Large personal wealth is the result of theft
• Rich people are criminals
• If you are poor, it is entirely your own fault
• Defensive and wary vis-a-vis "the other"

6
What the Czechs believe

• Sociologists
• Czechs are most happy within the privacy of
  their families
• Like under communism, they still regard the
  public sphere as hostile
• State services are unreliable and hostile
• Politicians are fraudulent
• The state of the economy is "dire"

7
What the Czechs are like

• Educational level of Czech women is similar to
  that in Scandinavia
• Social and economic position of Czech women
  subjugation
• Most Czechs have secondary education
• There is little research and development
• There is alienation at work
• Czechs identify themselves with their local
  village, town, the countryside (place of
  healing, refuge before "otherness")

8
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Early post 1990 films exorcised the trauma of
  communism
• Antonín Mášas Was this really us? (1990)
  highlights alienation which became the norm after
  1990

9
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Traumatic periods from history
• Petr Hvižds The Order (1994) helpless position
  of individual under totalitarian pressure hero
  forced to do what he hates

10
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Karel Kachyna, The Last Butterfly (1990)
• Central European belief that art will prevail
  over oppression

11
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Children as hope for the future
• (A Kingdom for a Guitar, made 1989, released
  1990)
• Metaphor of openness, freedom and
  inquisitiveness
• "I dont want influential friends, I want good
  friends."

12
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Jan Švankmajers Little Otík (2000)
• Warning against human attempts "to change what
  has been fixed by natural forces"

13
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Jan Švankmajers The Mad (2005), based on
  Marquis de Sade
• "Democracy is a lunatic asylum, but return to
  dictatorship would be worse"

14
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Early, optimistic commercial comedies
• The Sun, Hay, Sex (1991)
• "Everybody will become rich."

15
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Jan Kraus, The Little Town (2003)
• The benefits of the fall of communism young
  girls are forced to dance on tables before old
  men in the local pub

16
Czech Cinema The Themes

• Destitution
• Bohdan Slámas The Wild Bees (2001)
• Nothing will ever change
• "Work, women, this is capitalism, for fucks
  sake!"

17
Relations between men and women

• Czech film Statements in defence of subjugated
  women
• Weak, aggressive males
• Jan Hrebejks Cosy Dens (1999)

18
Relations between men and women

• Man the fantasist, chcípák, the intellectual
  vagrant-outsider
• Tomáš Vorels The Stone Bridge (1996)

19
Relations between men and women

• Czech men are unnecessarily violent
• Men look for sex, not a relationship
• Young attractive women strike relationships
  with men who are decades older

20
Kamenák (A Really Cruel Joke)

• Vulgar popular comedy
• Highly successful
• Three parts (Kamenák 1, 2, 3, 2003 2005)
• Verbal humour, ostranenie, puns

21
Kamenák

• Deeply familiar small town environment
• Cosy atmosphere everyone knows everyone

22
Kamenák

• Family life
• Archetypal Everyman - police chief Josef Novák,
  wife, son Joey

23
Kamenák

• The logic of the narrative sacrificed to verbal
  gags
• Insulting old people
• Insulting women

24
Kamenák

• Wife rushes about at breakfast, husband reads
  newspaper
• School is a place of torment children bring
  home only bad marks
• Corporal punishment at home

25
Kamenák

• Town environment
• Home
• School
• Hospital
• Fake monastery
• Castle

26
Kamenák

• The police (i.e. official authorities) are
  ineffectual
• The politicians are corrupt
• Serior criminals go unpunished, only minor
  criminals are caught
• Business consortium is made up of crooks
• Business is always corrupt
• No morals the opening of a brothel is highly
  celebrated

27
Kamenák Men and Women

• Young women seen only as sex objects
• Older women are subject of ridicule/source of
  horror
• Men are feeble
• In youth, they chase skirts,
• in old age are interested in football, beer

28
Kamenák Men and Women

• Men dont understand the female psychology
• Men of all ages are obsessed with the young
  female body
• Everything must be on mans terms There are no
  ideal men
• Gender stereotypes rule

29
Kamenák The Czechs and the Romanies

• The Romanies seen as an alien element in Czech
  society
• The close-knit Czech community doesnt need
  foreign influences Italian chianti is sour
• Presence of guns in Czech society
• Racist stereotypes of the Romanies
• Czech self-irony

30
Kamenáks success leads to preaching

• Low quality of Czech newspapers
• You dont like Klaus, you dont like the United
  States, you dont like naked girls, you dont
  like murders. I just dont know why we take that
  paper.

31
Kamenák Values

• Schadenfreude
• What leads to success is the correct thing to do
  regardless of morals
• Would it not be better to bribe the Romanies? It
  is more honest and, after all, these days, it is
  fashionable.

32
Which are the best films?

• Jan Švankmajer
• Lekce Faust (The Faust Lesson, 1994)
• Otesánek (Little Otík, 2000)
• Šílení (The Mad, 2005)

33
Which are the best films?

• Karel Kachyna
• Poslední motýl (The Last Butterfly, 1990)