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(THE DEBT, 1999), which is set amidst the milieu
of hopeful young entrepreneurs, illuminates the
subject of crime from another perspective: from
that of victims who get unexpectedly caught in
the claws of criminal machinations and are only
able to get free again by becoming perpetrators
themselves. PIGS in particular had an impact on
everyday Polish culture: “Pasikowski’s action film
influenced and constructed the societal perception
of real-life circumstances and led to the formation
of its own mental landscape. Numerous one-liners
from the script became part of the vernacular”
(Klejsa 2013: 425). What is remarkable is that
precisely these two films were made without any
involvement on the part of Polish television broadcaster
TVP – instead they were helped along by
successful director and producer Juliusz Machulski
and his production company Zebra, in association
with foreign investors like the cinema division of
Canal+ and the distributor ITI Cinema.
Aside from cinema with mass appeal, the 1990s
especially witnessed a number of aesthetically
ambitious films, such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s
late-period work (primarily produced in France),
LA DOUBLE VIE DE VÉRONIQUE / THE DOUBLE
LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (France/Poland/Norway
1991) and TROIS COULEURS: BLEU, BLANC, ROUGE
/ THREE COLOURS: BLUE, WHITE, RED (France/
Switzerland/Poland 1993-1994). All international
co-productions, which followed on the international
success of Kieślowski’s DEKALOG television
series (Poland 1989) and its cinema spin-offs
KRÓTKI FILM O ZABIJANIU / A SHORT FILM
ABOUT KILLING (Poland 1988) and KRÓTKI FILM
O MIŁOŚCI / A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (Poland
1988). And, to name yet a third phenomenon:
through the encroachment of western theories
of postmodernism, with its self-referential
focus, the medium of film, including the cinema
space and viewers, became a popular subject for
post-transition films. Examples for this tendency
are UCIECZKA Z KINA WOLNOŚĆ / ESCAPE FROM
‘LIBERTY’ CINEMA (Poland 1990) by Wojciech
Marczewski and HISTORIA KINA W POPIELAWACH
/ THE HISTORY OF CINEMA IN THE VILLAGE OF
POPIELAWY (Poland 1998) by Jan Jakub Kolski.
Here we have on the one hand, under the influence
of Woody Allen’s THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
(USA 1985), film characters rebelling against the
pre-determined script, although the device is
employed here as a political statement, and on the
other hand, in the mould of Giuseppe Tornatore’s
CINEMA PARADISO (Italy/France 1988), a nostalgically
affirmative story about the cinema as a place
of longing.
Poland and Romania therefore exhibit totally
different developments in their post-transition
cinematographies: while Romanian cinema is
nearly non-existent in the 1990s, Polish film
production managed to recover somewhat over the
course of the 1990s in spite of the initial slashing of
support. The situation in the Czech Republic can be
compared here. In the immediate post-transition
period, the privatisation of the Barrandov Film
Studios sparked a debate about the future of
film within the country (Barrandov had held a
monopoly on state film production up until 1989).
The planned sale appeared to older filmmakers
in particular as a selling-out of their ideals, for,
in spite of the ideological control that dominated
the film industry up until 1989, Barrandov
also represented stability and security for the
filmmakers. While foreign films, specifically those
from Hollywood, were conquering the domestic
market, Czech filmmakers were concerned about
the authenticity of their art. In this regard, the
discussion surrounding the privatisation of
Barrandov was not only one of art and commerce,
it also laid bare a generational conflict: it was
above all the filmmakers of the older generations
who felt attached to Barrandov (Vĕra Chytilová, Jiří
Menzel), while the younger ones, like Jan Hřebejk,
Jan Svěrák, Tomáš Vorel, Petr Zelenka and Irena
Pavlásková for example, dealt with the situation in
a more relaxed manner and showed a willingness
to embrace innovative forms and media. However:
the sale of Barrandov and the loss of hundreds of
jobs that followed was, as film writer Jindřiška
Bláhová stated, “one of the most traumatic
experiences for the [Czech] film community in the
1990s” (Bláhová, 2019: 49).
When we look at the quality of Czech films from
the 1990s, the situation here is also bleak at first
glance. The post-socialist Czech film landscape
can be divided into three areas: popular cinema,
arthouse cinema and debuts. Popular cinema
was above all represented by Jan Svĕrák, whose
OBECNÁ ŠKOLA / ELEMENTARY SCHOOL was
nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign
language film in 1991, and whose film KOLJA /
KOLYA then actually won said prize in 1996. Both
films were conventional from a formal perspective,
though they did display very high production
values, and they were so exciting that audiences
were delighted to watch them: in ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL, a drama unfolds around a teacher in
post-war Prague who is worshiped and ultimately
saved by his students; KOLYA is a warm-hearted
comedy set shortly before the Velvet Revolution
that deals with a marriage of convenience
between a laid-off cellist and a Russian woman, an
abandoned boy and the state security service. Both
films resolve their conflicts and end harmoniously.
For the arthouse cinema category, we have the
directors of the Czech New Wave, who took up this
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