From Ruptures to Continuities: Czechoslovak Cultural Heritage in Non-Fiction Cinema 1948-1956

Abstract

The article examines the post-war trajectory of the Czechoslovak politics of cultural heritage, its public presentation and circulation through the medium of non-fiction film. Specifically, it investigates the genres of ethnographic, geographic, and art films released after the political transformation in 1948 that brought the country under the direct influence of the Soviet Union. It describes the professional infrastructure and networks within which the fields of cultural heritage preservation and non-fiction cinema were operating and analyses their interactions in the realm of film production. Through the analysis of the film production background, audio-visual content itself, and related period visual ­culture, it finds a set of different narrative strategies used for public presentation of cultural heritage. These narratives are then placed in the context of the official cultural ideology. It exposes continuities that can be traced between the communist cultural politics introduced after the communist takeover in 1948 and the pre-WWII Czechoslovak cultural politics. The analysis shows the diversity within the film production whose primary goal was to celebrate and represent the national cultural heritage in and outside the country, and therefore understands these films as important tools of national and international cultural politics.