Socialism for Sale: Czechoslovakia’s Krátký film, Custom-Made Film Production, and the Promotion of Consumer Culture in the 1950s
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | This essay examines the relationship between the socialist state and short film in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, focusing on a mixture of ideological and commercial objectives in the process of negotiation about Krátký film's custom-made productions for state bodies. It takes into account the internal structures of consumer culture and the attitudes of official state bodies to consumerism in general and offers a deeper understanding of the importance of film promotion and advertising within the socialist system. It claims, that advertising films that supported consumer culture represented a challenge to socialism, which cultural policy failed to address for quite some time. Due to the medium’s high demand with regard to production time and cost, film had the potential to expose imbalances between the ideals of socialism and consumer culture Methodologically, this text combines the study of so-called 'useful film', custom-made film, and film propaganda—including a consideration of the specifics of exhibition in a non-theatrical environment—with an examination of the role of state-promotional film within socialistic consumer culture more generally. |
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