The Practice of Co-Production in the Eastern Bloc in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of Czechoslovakia, GDR and Poland

Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Masarykova Univerzita
About two hundred international co-productions were made in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR in the period 1957-1989. 27 of these were the result of co-operation between film studios in the three countries. Various motivations for co-productions are usually considered: shared expenses, technological transfer, political commissions, and prestige. In fact, these motivations were not sufficient to sustain continuous co-operation between the production partners. Instead, the rare examples of continuous collaboration were based on mutual trust between individuals and/or between ”dramaturgic“ groups. This talk will focus on a few examples of continuities and discontinuities in the production practice and will take into account alternatives to the model of co-productions, namely commercial commissions and ”travelling filmmakers“.  Pavel Skopal is an assistant professor at the Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. In 2010–2012 he was a visiting researcher at the Konrad Wolf Film and Television University in Potsdam, Germany (research project supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation). He has co-edited an anthology comparing cinema industry in Czechoslovakia and GDR in the 1950s (Cinema in Service of the State; Berghahn Books, 2015; co-editor: Lars Karl), and published The Cinema of the North Triangle (in Czech, 2014), a book of comparative research on cinema distribution and reception in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR in the period 1945–1970. His current book project is devoted to international co-productions in the Eastern Bloc.