Local filmmakers feel excluded

The Czech New Wave brought domestic films to the international stage, but 50 years later, local filmmakers are dealing with a significant loss in viewership that they say is caused by more than just consumer-spending behavior wrought by economic crisis.

Only 670,000 tickets were sold for Czech films at domestic theaters in the first five months of this year, compared with 1.55 million for the same period last year, and Czech films only made up 19 percent of total cinema visits, according to the Czech Film Center. Even the top selling movies this year saw significantly lower profits, with Jan Hřebejk's No. 1 movie Nevinnost (Innocence) earning 17.5 million Kč ($1 million) from January to May, compared with Jiří Vejdělek's Ženy v pokušení (Women in Temptation), which grossed 77 million Kč in ticket sales during the same period last year.

The government has made support for the film industry a priority, with Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg visiting Hollywood during his tour of the United States, and the Culture Ministry has said it is working to hammer out greater incentives for filmmakers in the Czech Republic.

However, people in the industry doubt whether those measures provide Czech films with enough support.

"Incentives are designed for foreign production. That is their aim: to revive the film-making industry," said Michal Surma, executive director of the Uherské Hradiště film school and the Association of Czech Film Clubs.

This year, the Culture Ministry had 300 million Kč to support Czech filmmaking, all of which has already been distributed just five months into the year. Culture Minister Jiří Besser has said he would again earmark at least 300 million Kč for the 2012 budget, which is currently being debated, and the support may even reach 500 million Kč.

However, there are numerous qualifications for receiving the funding, and the most harmful for domestic filmmakers is the requirement that a film's production costs exceed 10 million Kč.

"That excludes almost all Czech productions, which is totally unfair if we are speaking about boosting the business," said Jiří Konečný, a producer and founder of production company Endorfilm. "Five to 10 Czech films ... would cost just one-third of a single big Hollywood production. I think this should be fair. It's not like it would harm the support."

Some are also worried about a new proposal to take funding from commercial television advertising revenues rather than state television only, as it was in the past. The Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to the Television Act July 14 that limits advertising on public television and requires commercial television stations to give 2 percent of their revenue to the state cinematography fund.

Surma called this move "a great threat to the industry."

"The system of how private television stations will finance and how much they will influence actual production has yet to be decided," he said. "I can easily see that if a private television station gives millions somewhere, it will hardly be based on any criterion of artistic value."

The success of the Czech film industry has also been dampened by problems faced in all countries, including limited consumer spending and an increase in both the legal and illegal streaming of online videos, which eats into ticket sales at the cinema. However, money isn't the industry's only problem.

"The reason our films do not achieve major international success is not just for financial reasons, but because of the topics," Surma said.

The language and topics limit how widely appealing many Czech films are, he said, which in turn limits their success in foreign theaters and festivals, and even on the Czech market.

"With the film Czech Made Man, attendance was expected to be some 150,000," Surma said by way of example. "But despite a great promotion, only around 50,000 showed up."

Competing with sprawling industries like those in the United States and the rest of Europe is difficult, Konečný said, and many film distributors don't want to gamble on Czech films.

"We are so small and have so few sources of promotion and distribution, and distribution is key," he said. "There is no real entrepreneurial environment. Distributors are afraid of Czech films and afraid of failure, so they only go for the sure-fire commercial titles."

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

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Cat Contiguglia can be reached at
ccontiguglia@praguepost.com