Lucernafilm

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Alongside Pragafilm , Lucernafilm was one of the major film production companies in Prague . The company was a family business of the Havel family and existed in the period 1912–1949.

history

Lucerna Passage on Wenceslas Square in Prague, bust of master builder Ing.Vácslav Havel

The Lucernafilm Ges. Mb H. , Národní 28, Prague 1, was grandfather of the later on 13 July 1912 as a family business by the Prague builder Ing. Vácslav Havel (1861-1921), Czech President same name, Vaclav Havel founded. Havel built a modern office building on Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague in the period 1907–1920 together with Stanislav Bechyně (1887–1973) in three construction phases, which also included a spacious hall for the first large Prague cinema, Lucerna , with more than 700 seats.

For his company, which originally consisted of the production of short messages, he bought film material and equipment on December 31, 1915 from the film company Kinofa, founded by Antonín Pech (1874–1928) . Havel's son Miloš (1899–1968) was actively involved in the work of Lucernafilm , whose role in the initial phase was mainly to negotiate approval for filming with the Austrian authorities.

The cameraman Karel Degl was appointed head of the Lucernafilm laboratory in January 1916 . In the two remaining years of the First World War , Degl gained his first experience as a cameraman for Czech-language feature films.

One of the few examples of censored nature recordings is the film Svátek českého národa (1. Máje) - Holiday of the Czech Nation (May 1) , a Lucernafilm production that was checked in May 1918 and not approved.

The film director Otakar Vávra worked for several film companies between 1931 and 1945 , including Lucernafilm , where he worked on the last Protectorate film, Rozina sebranec ( The Foundling Rosina ), in 1944/45 .

Zita Kabátová in the Lucernafilm production Muži nestárnou , 1942

During World War II , Lucernafilm was one of two companies that could make films in Czech. At the time of the German occupation, Miloš Havel was forced to sell the Barrandov film studio and in 1941 the film company was converted into the Nazi-oriented Prag-Film AG. The comparatively small production company Lucernafilm remained independent.

The eminent Czech news and documentary photographer Zdeněk Tmej (1920–2004) worked during the Second World War and a few years later in photography for the film studios Barrandov and Lucernafilm , albeit illegally as he did not have a workbook . Tmej worked there directly with the photographer Karel Ludwig (1919–1977), who had founded an advertising department in the company.

The Gestapo -Beamte Willi Abendschön was in May 1945 during the Prague uprising in the city of insurgents, mainly employees of Lucernafilm fixed directly at the office at Národní 28th He was executed among others in Prague in 1946.

After the liberation of Czechoslovakia, most of the film studios were nationalized in 1945. The Palais Lucerna and other properties owned by Václav Maria Havel (father of the president) initially remained untouched after the end of the war. Miloš Havel, on the other hand, was interrogated because of his contacts with the occupiers and his work for the German film industry. After the Communist Party KSČ came to power in February 1948, Havel tried to flee to the West for the first time. However, he only managed to get into the Soviet occupation zone in Austria. He was imprisoned for over two years and moved to Munich in 1952 .

In March 1948 it became apparent that the Lucernafilm Society was to be nationalized and renamed Československý státni film ( Czechoslovak State Film ). The Ministry of Information and Enlightenment announced the nationalization on September 30, 1949 and declared itself the national administrator. The film company Lucernafilm was dissolved in 1950.

See also

literature

  • Cinema and television almanac. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1977, p. 232.
  • Ludmila Rakusan: Václav and Dagmar Havel - A Prague Story. Langen Müller, Munich 1999, p. 195.
  • Walter Schamschula: History of Czech Literature. Vol. 3: From the founding of the republic to the present. Böhlau, Cologne 2004, p. 483.
  • The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema . Edit v. Richard Taylor et al., BFI, London 2000, p. 54.
  • Jörg Schöning, Johannes Roschlau, Hans-Michael Bock: Film in the heart of Europe . CineGraph, Hamburg Center for Film Research, Hamburg 2007, p. 29.
  • Barry Keith Grant: Schirmer: Encyclopedia of Film: Criticism - Ideology . Thomson Gale, Detroit 2007, p. 25.
  • Tereza Dvořáková: Prag-Film AG 1941–1945. In the field of tension between protectorate and imperial cinematography. With a contribution: “Czech Cinematography in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” by Ivan Klimeš. edition Text + Criticism, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88377-950-8 , p. 55.
  • Petr Szczepanik: Továrna Barrandov. Svět filmařů a politická moc 1945–1970. Národní filmový archiv, Praha 2017. ISBN 978-80-7004-177-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Armin Loacker (Ed.): Ekstase. Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna 2001, p. 381.
  2. ↑ Petr Bednařík: Arizace české cinematography. Karolinum Press, 2003, p. 60.
  3. ↑ Cinema and television almanac. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1977, p. 232. On the construction of the Lucerna Palace: Otakar Nový: Ohňostroj pražských barů a lokálů . Praha 1995, p. 19.
  4. ^ Robyn Karney, Joel Waldo Finler, Ronald Bergan: Cinema Year by Year: The Complete Illustrated History of Film. Dorling Kindersley, 2006, p. 110.
  5. ↑ Jana Kozelová: Česká cinematography v letech 1938-1948 a Miloš Havel. Master thesis, Masaryk University, Philosophical Faculty, Brno 2014.
  6. ^ Czechoslovakia (from the beginnings to 1989) . Edited by Vladimir Opěla, International Federation of Film Archives, 2019, p. 36 f.
  7. ↑ Tyrolean Provincial Archives, Innsbruck, collection of censorship cards kk Lieutenancy of Bohemia , explained in Paolo Caneppele: decisions of the Prague Film Censorship 1916-1918 , Film Archiv Austria, Vienna 2003 (= materials for Austrian film history 12), p VII was in Czechoslovakia. the May Day holiday introduced in 1919.
  8. ↑ Český hraný film III 1945–1960 . Národní Filmový Archive, 2001, p. 276.
  9. ^ Jörg Schöning, Johannes Roschlau, Hans-Michael Bock: Film in the heart of Europe . CineGraph, 2007, p. 29.
  10. ^ Zdeněk Tmej: Total commitment. Distributed Art Pub Incorporated, New York 2001, pp. 133, 137.
  11. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Andreas Weigelt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , p. 8.
  12. ↑ Ludmila Rakusan: Václav and Dagmar Havel - A History of Prague. Langen Müller, Munich 1999, p. 195.
  13. ^ John Keane: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts. Bloomsbury, London 1999, p. 71. Cf. on this the memories of the president-father Václav Maria Havel - VM Havel: Mé vzpominky. Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, Praha 1993, p. 68.
  14. ↑ Národní filmový archiv: Lucernafilm sro , accessed on April 14, 2020.