Abstract
This chapter combines questions about the structural position that minority co-production occupies within the Czech screen industry ecology and about local producers as its key agency. It starts with a picture of minority co-production vis-à-vis other international “production technologies” and with reconstructing producers’ cautionary discourse on majority co-production. After providing basic structural industry and policy analysis, it switches to day-to-day collaborative processes as seen by the local independent producers, focusing on their strategic thinking and lived realities. It asks about the role of knowledge transfer and symbolic capital accumulation on one hand, and about the new power hierarchies and barriers emerging from such transnational production contexts on the other.
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Notes
- 1.
Council of Europe Convention on Cinematographic Co-production (revised). Rotterdam, 30 January 2017.
- 2.
For a useful theory of knowledge transfer’s channels and barriers within “global production networks”, see Ernst and Kim (2002).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
This approach draws on the “integrated cultural-industrial method of analysis”, proposed by John Caldwell (2008, 4), which aims at overcoming the traditional antithesis between the political economy of the media and the cultural analysis of texts and practices.
- 6.
The first set of interviews, comprising 24 semi-structured interviews with Czech producers and 20 interviews with directors, was conducted for an industry report on film development practices by Petr Szczepanik, Johana Kotišová and Eva Pjajčíková in 2014 and 2015 (Szczepanik et al. 2015). International co-production represented one of 12 coding categories (others included, for example, “initiation of the project and composition of the development team”, “definition of development”, etc.). The respondents were chosen based on a representative sample of 50 Czech fiction feature films produced between 2009 and 2013. In order to fill gaps in, and update, the former sample, a set of follow-up interviews with five producers known for their extensive co-production experience was carried out between 2016 and 2018 by Petr Szczepanik specifically for the present study. All of the interviews focused on producer practices, professional identities and strategic thinking. The interviews employed the technique of “elite interviewing” used in production studies to investigate higher-level industry practitioners (see Bruun 2016). The qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed how producers are conditioned by their structural positions in the field of media production and by the limitations of the small national market, while describing how heavily reliant they are on public support.
- 7.
In 2006, a prominent UK consultancy was commissioned by the Czech Ministry of Culture to conduct an economic impact study of the Czech film industry in order to lobby the national government to introduce a rebate programme (Olsberg SPI 2006). In the Czech Ministry of Culture’s Strategy of Film Support and Development for 2011–2016 (2010), this division was referred to as a harmful stereotype that needed to be overcome in order to increase the international competitiveness of Czech films (see www.mkcr.cz/doc/cms_library/koncepce-podpory-a-rozvoje-ceske-kinematografie-2011-2016-1548.pdf).
- 8.
See the MA thesis of the renowned producer Pavel Strnad, a co-founder of Negativ production company (Strnad 2000).
- 9.
The first Czech-German minority co-production, supported by MDM, was Sputnik (2013).
- 10.
See the Czech Film Chamber’s annual reports from 2008–2011 (www.filmovakomora.cz/cs/informace-o-cfk).
- 11.
The government agency Czech Tourism, tasked with promoting the Czech Republic as an attractive tourist destination abroad, even used it for its marketing campaign in the autumn of 2012.
- 12.
See the 2015 amendment to the Audiovisual Act (https://fondkinematografie.cz/assets/media/files/filmove%20pobidky/2017/ACT_496_AJ_final.doc).
- 13.
See the Czech Film Fund’s Long-Term Strategy (http://fondkinematografie.cz/assets/media/files/legislativa/DK_A5_FIN_online_kor5_FIN.pdf).
- 14.
See the Fund’s aforementioned strategy and calls (http://fondkinematografie.cz/zadosti-o-podporu).
- 15.
See increasingly common press releases and articles in the trade press such as “The First Exceptional Participation in Years for Czech Films at the Cannes Film Festival” (www.filmneweurope.com/press-releases/item/112644-the-first-exceptional-participation-in-years-for-czech-films-at-the-cannes-film-festival).
- 16.
An interview with Ondřej Zima conducted by Petr Szczepanik on 7 December 2017.
- 17.
I am here drawing on my interview with the film’s Czech producer (October 2014) as well as on interviews conducted by my former student Eva Burgertová (2016) with several producers and other personnel involved in the project.
- 18.
The fundamental importance of trust as a means of initiating and successfully completing a co-production, one rooted in a previous collaboration with foreign partners or based on proven track records, is highlighted in Bondebjerg et al. (2017, 99–128).
- 19.
The EU-funded FIND project (www.projectfind.cz, 2012–2014), helmed by Petr Szczepanik and Petr Bilík, used student internships to conduct a collective ethnography of production cultures, while also facilitating a platform for dialogue between local media professionals and academia via conferences, blogs, essays, discussions and excursions.
- 20.
To quote concrete numbers, Personal Shopper received a minority co-production grant of €43,000, rebates of €260,000 and a €4000 support payment for attending the Cannes Film Festival. See the Czech Film Fund’s annual reports (http://fondkinematografie.cz/o-fondu/vyrocni-zprava.html).
- 21.
An anonymised interview conducted by Petr Szczepanik for a study on film development, commissioned by the Czech Film Fund (Szczepanik et al. 2015).
- 22.
An interview with Jiří Konečný conducted by Petr Szczepanik, 6 December 2017.
- 23.
An interview with Pavel Berčík conducted by Petr Szczepanik, 30 October 2014.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [project reference 17-13616S] and by the European Regional Development Fund [project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World”, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734].
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Szczepanik, P. (2018). Breaking through the East-European Ceiling: Minority Co-production and the New Symbolic Economy of Small-Market Cinemas. In: Hammett-Jamart, J., Mitric, P., Novrup Redvall, E. (eds) European Film and Television Co-production. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97157-5_9
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