Workshop of Pioneers: A Collaborative Authorship and Professionalism in the Czech Silent Cinema of 1917–1922
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The paper focused on the models of filmmaking practice in the Czech silent cinema in relation to the socio-political transformation as well as industrial transition from shooting one-reelers to the production of feature-length pictures in 1917-1922. Under these circumstances, a new generation of the local film “pioneers,” who represented a vital creative force, emerged in Czechoslovakia. Despite a valuable insight into the careers of such important representatives as Gustav Machatý or Karel Lamač, scholars tend to neglect the collective dimension of their practice in favour of their individual style. Drawing on the concept of the Renaissance bottega, this paper seeked to show that creativity was regularly shared and negotiated by multiple agents who made their films together in a “workshop” environment, while learning cinematic techniques and establishing standards of professionalism. Therefore, filmmakers usually cooperated without clear division of labour and with overlapping competences and responsibilities. Thus, such pictures prove to be the result of highly collaborative decision-making processes and mediated group styles. Based on the records of personal testimony and other archival evidence, the paper covered two general models of such practice in the Czech filmmaking community. Special attention is paid to the case of the production company Weteb that functioned, to a great extent, in a workshop-like fashion under the supervision of its owner and “master” who guaranteed final products with his directorial signature. In so doing, the paper reorientates our attention from the role of individual geniuses to wider and more complex problems of hierarchy of power, authorship and authority in peripheral cinema of a small nation during a quintessentially formative period. |
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