The Reich, the Europe, the Protectorate, and the Cinema. Prag-Film during Crystallization and Realization of Nazi Film Expansion
Abstract
The study focuses on answering several partial research questions that contextualize the topic of the Protectorate film industry, namely the circumstances of the origin and existence of by-Nazis-created the Prag-Film company. The first part of the study introduces the Reich film concept whose aim was the general production and economic strengthening of German cinema on domestic and foreign level.
From 1937 to 1942, the Nazis realized an extensive centralization and partial nationalization of film infrastructure in Germany and in some of the occupied countries including the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. The second part of the study analyses the particular steps and circumstances that led to the Germanization of the Czech film studios by Cautio Treuhand.
We are mapping a negotiation process from 1942 whose goal was to clarify the position of the new Prague film company, formally situated under the authority of the Reich Protector's Office's Cultural department, but also under the supervision of the UFI Reich Group (the subsidiary of which Prag-Film became in the same year). Between 1941 and 1944, Germans invested heavily in Prague film studios and built up a complex of 13 film sound stages.
Their total area in 1944 was bigger than the area of soundstages of the largest German film company Ufa. Last but not least, the Prag-Film served as an effective instrument of control over Czech film production, and thanks to the systematic engagement of Czech filmmakers it has also played an important propaganda role.
Prag-Film became a successful example of a fully integrated instrument serving the goals of Reich's film policy.