A High Contrast Portrait. Representations of the Czech-German Borderland in Recent Czech Film and TV Productions
Abstrakt
Using visual social semiotics tools, the paper studies representations of the Czech-German borderland in the film Schmitke (2014) and two television series Pustina (2016) and Rapl (2016). In recent years, Czech cinema has followed the path of world cinema in producing films and television series that could be classified as (Nordic) noir.
Since 2015, a handful of productions following this globally recognized genre have been made. The northwestern borderland of the Czech Republic, also known as the Sudetes, has become the setting for these productions.
The high contrast postindustrial landscape, abandoned places, and wild mountains seem to catch the attention of filmmakers searching for a less obvious and more ambiguous background. The aim of the study is to analyze meanings behind the representations and to point out elements that are distinct to Czech productions following the global noir trend.