Film Units as (Sub)producers: Possibilities of a “House Style” in the State-socialist Mode of Production
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This paper discusses conditions for group-based creativity and style in the state-socialist production system of the former Czechoslovakia. The paper pays particular attention to the manner in which day-to-day creative activities were managed within a system that designated the state the sole official producer, and to organizational solutions which were introduced in an effort to strike a balance between centralized control and creative freedom. I will draw on my previous work on what I call the "State-socialist Mode of Film Production"--which comprises management hierarchies, the division of labor, and work practices--through the example of the Czechoslovak cinema after 1954, when so-called film units were re-established as a part of a general decentralization of the rigid production system of the early 1950s. By focusing on the early stage of the transformation process, when the units--practically substituting hands-on producers or middle managers--were pushed to innovate and differentiate by building informal collaborative networks with young writers and directors, I attempt to describe the social workings of group style in its nascent form, before it materialized into the first revisionist film movement of the post-WW2 Czech cinema. Such a practice-oriented perspective defines group style not just as common formal features of finished films, but rather as a set of shared practices and beliefs of those who produced them. |
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