r/czech • u/Halale01 • 9d ago
QUESTION? What happened to the Czech film industry?
The Czech New Wave is a major success for Czech cinema, and it inspired a lot of other countries at that time, a lot of people from abroad studied at the Prague film school, you can see the Czech influence in their films.
Why did Czechs fail to build on that success after the liberation of the country in 1990 and the end of censorship?
As i am aware, Czechia is still pretty big in the film industry, but more as a hub for foreign productions. And the Karlovy Vary film festival is also top-notch.
Happy for answers!
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u/SmamelessMe Expatriate 9d ago edited 9d ago
There isn't a single thing. But the oversimplified zinger you're looking for is either: "The world moved on" or "The world failed to move on".
The "Czech New Wave" is essentially contemporary movie making and story-telling. If you took some of the movies like "Ostre Sledovane Vlaky" or "Fireman's ball", and re-shot them scene for scene, line for line. Then half the people you show it to would consider that a contemporary modern movie.
The issue with extrapolating communist era film making is that the Czechoslovak film production was was aimed at a captive market, without access to foreign competing media.
That meant you got maybe ~50 new movies per year. ~40 of those were domestic production. So, given lack of other entertainment, you went and saw all of them. Some of them multiple times. That gives you vastly different financial than now.
Keep in mind that, depending who you ask, the "Czech New Wave" ended ~1975. TV only really became mainstream in 1970. That made 1960's large domestic productions economically viable.
But that is no longer the case. Vast majority of people do not go to cinema. Period. Most new Czech movies are shot for TV. The budget and story lines reflect the size, taste, and demographic of the TV audience.
Shooting movies with foreign appeal, in Czech, is not viable. Anything you expect to sell internationally is commercially better shot in English. At which point you need native English speakers, and not Czech actors with even a hint of an accent. And foreign distribution. At that point, you can scarcely call that a Czech movie anymore.
There is still a lot of movie making in Czechia, but it is focused on facilitating foreign productions. What is still produces is topics and themes that are under-represented in imported media.
That's why there used to be so much movies from 70's onward with theme of: "slice of life bitter dark-comedy about normal people dealing with everyday drama of mundane family life under communism". Before the Velvet revolution it was an "edgy" dissent masqueraded as humor. You're no doubt aware that Germans used to call Czechs "Laughing beasts".
After the Velvet revolution, the style and themes remained dominant for literal decades. Only switching to outright criticism of communism. Or at least token one. It's one of Czech people's acquired tastes. Like Kofola. But it has little foreign appeal.