Project information
Cultural-historical context of transition to recorded synchronous sound in the Czech cinema

Investor logo
Project Identification
GP408/03/D174
Project Period
9/2003 - 8/2006
Investor / Pogramme / Project type
Czech Science Foundation
MU Faculty or unit
Faculty of Arts
Keywords
early sound cinema, international contexts of national cinema, intermediality

The aim of this project is to prepare for publication a historical and theoretical monograph using today´s methods of research to analyze the complex contexts within which the global expansion of reproduced sound in the Czech cinema of the early 1930s took place. The advent of sound will not be treated as a point in technological progress but as a breaking point in a longer cultural history of film sound, as well as in the history of interrelations between the national and the international context of the Czech film culture. The historical process will be contextualized within a complex network of relations, including the formal-aesthetic, cultural, social, political, economical, industrial and technological factors, not only in terms of film form (changes in style and narrative techniques) but also in terms of distribution (the history of politics and economics of distribution), exhibition (the history of ways of film exhibition in cinemas) and reception (the transformation of the spectator´s cultural experience, the national and political contexts of the spoken language in film, the public debate about synchronous sound). The project will be based on an original resource-oriented research and the methods of the "new film history" which emphasizes interpretation of the widest spectrum of resources, as well as the issues of reception. The project will be coordinated with the research activities of an international group of film historians, organized by University of Udine. The theme of this work will provide a ground for future, more general cultural and historical reflections and the resulting text will be designed to address scholarly, interest and non-professional groups of readers.

Publications

Total number of publications: 14


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