Army Film and the Avant Garde

Book excerpt: A history of the Czechoslovakian military’s connection to some of the nation’s most innovative and subversive cinema. During the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet-led invasion and occupation that followed, Czechoslovakia’s Army Film studio was responsible for some of the most politically subversive and aesthetically innovative films of the period. Although the studio is remembered primarily as a producer of propaganda and training films, some notable New Wave directors began their careers there, making films that considerably enrich the history of that movement. Alice Lovejoy examines the institutional and governmental roots of postwar Czechoslovak cinema and provides evidence that links the Army Film studio to Czechoslovakia’s art cinema. By tracing the studio’s unique institutional dimensions and production culture, Lovejoy explores the ways in which the “military avant-garde” engaged in dialogue with a range of global film practices and cultures. (The print version of the book includes a DVD featuring sixteenth short films produced by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense. The additional media files are not available on the eBook.) “Alice Lovejoy’s revelatory study of the cinema culture wrought by the Czechoslovak Army Film studio is a cause for celebration among both cinephiles and media scholars. . . . Lovejoy’s curatorial enterprise brings these fascinating films to us for fresh examination. Seeing these artful army films nearly half a century later opens our eyes to work that requires us to reassess what we thought we knew about documentary, new waves, and world cinema itself.” —Dan Streible, New York University “Lovejoy restores these sometimes funny, sometimes poignant and always innovative films to their proper place in film history, while explaining the unique cultural politics that allowed them to blossom beneath the noses of the Stalinist government.” —Tom Gunning, University of Chicago “Filled with surprises for readers who thought they knew their Czech film history, this insightful book refutes many received ideas about Eastern European cultural politics during the Cold War and sketches a complex and nuanced relationship between artists and the socialist state.” —Rick Prelinger, UC Santa Cruz