Abstract
The study deals with the characteristics of Czech industrial film during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) on the example of the Škoda company, former armory and then one of the key engineering companies of the interwar years. The resulting text is based on research into film materials preserved in Národní filmový archiv, Prague. In the case of Škoda, a corpus of preserved utility films is relatively large and diversified. This made it possible to focus on very specific modes of cooperation between industry and cinematography as a basis for certain general typology. The study follows three types of "work" performed by films for the Škoda company. The first one is the systematic documentation of the modern factory facilities, and thus creating and exploiting a new image of the company. This image was required by postwar development in various branches of peaceful production. The second research area is represented by the narratives about engineering products as bearers of the brand. Finally, the representation of the Škoda outgrew in several cases into the image of social significance of the modern industry as such.
This basic framework can be compared with other similar examples of reciprocal relationship between industrial companies and cinema. On one hand, it could be considered quite typical. On the other hand, there are apparently important specifics, particularly linked to the simultaneous defining and stabilization of the state or dealing with the militaristic rhetoric traditionally tied to the engineering industry.