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Czech Science Foundation – Part D1
Applicant: Mgr. Radomír Kokeš, Ph.D.
Department/Faculty/University: Department of Film and Audiovisual Culture, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk
University, Arne Nováka 1, Brno 602 00, The Czech Republic
DEGREES
2014: PhD, Theory and History of Theatre, Film and Audiovisual Culture Studies, Masaryk University.
Dissertation: Walks Across Macroworlds: Poetics of Serial Fiction
2011: M. A., Film and Audiovisual Culture Studies, Masaryk University. MA Thesis: Theory of Serial fiction
2009: B. A., Film and Audiovisual Culture Studies, Masaryk University. BA Thesis: "Crime fiction investigation
": fictional semantics proposal of crime television series
ACADEMIC AND TEACHING POSITIONS
2018-present: Department Vice-head, Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture, Faculty of Arts,
Masaryk University
2014-present: Assistant Professor, Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture, Faculty of Arts,
Masaryk University
2012-2013: Visiting Teacher, Faculty of Multimedia Communications, Tomas Bata University of Zlín
2011-2013: Teacher, High School of Arts and Management, ltd.
2010-2011: Visiting Teacher, Film Studies Department, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Charles University
RESEARCH INTERESTS
• The history of film style and narrative of Czech cinema till 1945
• Narrative principles and features of worldbuilding in serial film and television fiction
• Spiral narrative as an innovative schema of popular storytelling
• History of formalist and structuralist film theories
• Possibilities of quantitative film style analysis
BOOKS
2016: Světy na pokračování. Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění. [Worlds To Be Continued. Analysing
Possibilities of Serial Narrativity], Praha: Akropolis
2015: Rozbor filmu [Film Analysis]. Brno: Masaryk University
COURSES TAUGHT (selection from the last five years)
regularly since 2011: Introduction to Film Studies (in Czech)
regularly since 2020: Film Style Analysis (in Czech)
regularly since 2020: Film Narrative Analysis (in Czech)
regularly since 2015: History of World Cinema till 1945 (in Czech)
2020: European Film Movements of Silent Era (in English)
2019: Innovation in a Spiral (in Czech)
2018: Changing of Poetics and Aesthetic Norms of Czech Cinema to 1922 (in Czech)
2017: Worlds To Be Continued (in Czech)
2016: David Bordwell's Poetics of Cinema (in Czech)
INVITED LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS (selection from the last five years, only in English)
2019: Fictional Worlds of Spiral Narrative ("XIV. Prague Interpretation Colloquium. Thinking and Speaking
about Fictional Worlds"; Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, CR, April)
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2019: The Spiral Narrative and the Sequel: How to Innovate an Innovative Schema? (NECS – European Network
for Cinema and Media Studies, Gdansk, Poland, June)
2017: Do It again, again… and again: "Loop Narrative" as a Tactic of Popular Storytelling (Fast, Slow
& Reverse. Faces of Contemporary Film Narration, Gdaňsk, Poland, May)
2017: More than three hours…? Research of (Hollywood's) narrative principles in very long films (ENN – The
5th International Conference of the European Narratology Network, Prague, CR, September)
2016: Directed by Jan Svěrák: Film Poetics In-Between Czech Traditions and International Ambitions (6th
Annual
Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference, Prague, CR, December)
PARA-ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES (selection with an impact on the last five years)
since 2020: Cooperation with Summer Film School (Uherské Hradiště)
since 2017: The Film-Shot-Counter (online: douglaskokes.cz/pdz) – an extensive film database measuring various
quantifiable aspects of the film style with about three thousand items; founded, managed, and continuously
broadened by him
since 2013: Member of Editorial Board of Czech academic journal Iluminace
since 2011: Founder member and head of scholarly society Brno Narratological Circle
since 2008: Cooperation with 70mm film Festival – KRRR! (Krnov)
PROFESSIONAL STAYS ABROAD
2015 (October–November): Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England
2013 (May): University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
2007 (February–June): University of Udine, Udine, Italy
PUBLICATIONS RELATED TO THE TOPIC OF THE PROPOSED PROJECT (from the last five years)
• The Poetics of a Regional Cinema: Czech Films of the 1920s and Early 1930s. In Bernd Herzogenrath (ed.):
Hollywood of Eastern Europe: The Barrandov Studios. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
[forthcoming]
• (2020) Česká kinematografie jako regionální poetika. Otázky kontinuity a počátky studiové produkce.
Iluminace, n. 3, pp. 5–40
• (2019) Norms, Forms and Roles. Panoptikum, n. 22 (1), pp. 52–78.
• (2018) Filmové herectví, česká němá kinematografie a otázky studia stylu. Iluminace, n. 2, pp. 21–57
• (2017) Vítězslav Nezval, role fotogenie a myšlenkový obrat. Iluminace, n. 4, pp. 31–46
• (2016) Kinematografický výskyt Josefa Švejka. In František A. Podhajský (ed.): Fikce Jaroslava Haška.
Praha: Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v. v. i., pp. 272–293
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Part C1
Project Description
Applicant: Mgr. Radomír Kokeš, Ph.D.
Name of the Project:
Before Barrandov: The Narrative and Stylistic Poetics of Czech Film until 1933
I. The current state of research in the relevant area:
The proposed project refers to two research traditions of film studies: the new film history and the poetics of
cinema.
The New film history is a revisionist movement in film studies, which has been developing since the 1970s and
is related to the institutionalisation and self-definition of film studies at universities, mainly American, British, and
French ones (cf. Szczepanik 2004). Although it may be surprising in the 2021 project, for a better understanding of
the current state of knowledge of Czech film history and historiography, it is appropriate to go back to 1985. As it
is well known, Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery formulated, critically overlooked, and revised four approaches
to writing film history: technological film history, economic film history, social film history – and aesthetic film
history (Allen-Gomery: 36–38). The state of knowledge in the field of "new aesthetic histories of film" is significant
for this project. For Allen and Gomery, the aesthetic film history was entirely a part of the repertoire of approaches,
a part of "a set of complex interactive systems of human communication, business practice, social interaction,
artistic possibilities, and technology" (Allen-Gomery 1985: 37). Simultaneously, they defined aesthetic film history
in a way that is close to this project, namely, "the history of the cinema as an art form. […] Thus, aesthetic film
history would not only include the study of directors, styles of filmmaking, and artistic movements in the cinema,
but a consideration of why some aesthetic uses (narrative uses, for example) have been predominant in film history
while others have been used less frequently" (Allen-Gomery 1985: 37). Over time, however, new film historians'
emphasis on social (or cultural) and economic film history prevailed, most evidently in the shift to the so-called
new cinema history (Maltby-Biltereyst-Meers 2011, Biltereyst-Maltby-Meers 2019). Thus, although new film
history has significantly contributed to a revised understanding of the aesthetic history of early film (Holman 1982,
Burch 1990, Elsaesser-Barker 1990, Abel 1994, 2005) or more generally silent cinema (Abel 1984, Tsivian 1989,
Salt 2009), their need to revise the traditional aesthetic history of cinema has somewhat fallen into the background.
This trajectory is essential for better understanding of the background of the project I am proposing and of which
roots right in a more general effort to revise and partly begin systematic work on Czech cinema's (new) aesthetic
history. On the one hand, the influence of the new film history paradigms on the transformation of Czech academic
film historiography was considerable in the field's transformative period at the end of the 1990s and beginning of
the 2000s. The movement of new film history significantly influenced several generations of film researchers and
led to a comprehensive, internationally unique book anthology of critical new film history essays (Szczepanik
2004). On the other hand, this has already happened when the agenda associated with the revision of aesthetic film
history has moved to the background in the community of new film historians. What was the result? There are
fundamental disproportions in the process of revising or adding historical knowledge in Czech film studies.
Thanks to the long-term and careful research work of Petr Szczepanik (e. g. Szczepanik 2009), Ivan Klimeš (e.
g. Klimeš 2016), Michal Večeřa (e. g. Večeřa 2019), Pavel Skopal (e. g. Skopal 2019), Lucie Česálková (e. g.
Česálková 2014, Česálková-Skopal 2017) or Tereza Cs. Dvořáková (e. g. Dvořáková 2011), we now have a reliable
awareness of the political, production, economic and cultural history of Czech cinema before 1945. In contrast, we
still know very little about the Czech history of films as an art form and films as the results of artistic creativity.
Especially in the field of already published works, there are only partial outputs that contribute to this knowledge:
about the 1910s, Ivan Klimeš offered multiple specific probes (Klimeš 2013), Michal Bregant wrote several
analyses of specific films (e. g. Bregant 1993), about particular creators in a more general context, Martin Kos
contributed in his research of Jan Stanislav Kolár (e. g. Kos 2019), Jan Trnka published parts of his dissertation on
a screenwriter (Trnka 2016), and Šárka Gmiterková in her forthcoming monograph brings many discoveries on the
GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT 15 / 24
famous actor Oldřich Nový. Written by myself, there are analytically based academic articles on the narrative and
style of early Czech cinema until 1915 (Kokeš 2014), on acting and staging in Czech film until 1918 (Kokeš 2018),
and on the dual continuity of the history of Czech film before Barrandov (Kokeš 2020, Kokeš forthcoming).
Simultaneously, in the area of traditional (Czech) film history, we can take into account Smrž 1933: 644 – 682,
Ježek 1946, Brož-Frída 1959, 1966, Bartošek 1985, Štábla 1988-1990 and concerning post-war film history, Lukeš
2013. In the genre of overview history of national cinema, they all represent the usual mix of "social and political
history, descriptions of the film industry, discussion of genre biographies of directions, and plot synopsis" (Bordwell
1997: 120). Thus, although they seem to consider the history of film as an art, in fact, they are only minimally, let
alone systematically concerned with aesthetic principles of cinema. When they deal with the films’ properties
themselves, these passages are brief evaluations based on unspecified assumptions about the desirable aspects of
film works or comparison with already canonised films from abroad. Aesthetic history of Czech film in the meaning
defined above and below, which should be based on detailed primary research of audio-visual material in the form
of a corpus of ordinary films and its understanding in appropriate contexts and appropriate historical continuities,
does not yet exist in any shape.
So, what international knowledge, projects, and approaches can a similar project build on? Above all, these are
existing research projects close to the poetics of cinema research programme's interests, which develop the
traditions of Russian formalism, Czech structuralism, and some directions of art history (especially the
Gombrichian). This research programme was initially associated with the new film history but eventually became
rather an alternative approach. American scholar David Bordwell has been proposing it regularly since the early
1980s: "[A] poetics of cinema aims to produce reliable knowledge by pursuing questions within two principal areas
of inquiry. First is what we might call analytical poetics. What are the principles according to which films are
constructed and through which they achieve particular effects? Second, there's historical poetics, which asks: How
and why have these principles arisen and changed in particular empirical circumstances?" (Bordwell 2008: 23)
The seminal work of the poetics of cinema is the book The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode
of Production to 1960 (Bordwell-Staiger-Thompson 1985), which represents an essential methodological point of
departure for my project as well. Through a detailed analysis of (a) hundreds of randomly selected films and an
expanded sample of two hundred films, and (b) an analysis of the creative principles of the studio industry, the
authors offered "an examination of Hollywood cinema as a distinct artistic and economic phenomenon." They take
"Hollywood seriously, treating it as a distinct mode of film practice with its own cinematic style and industrial
conditions of existence" (Bordwell-Staiger-Thompson 1985: xiii). Perhaps due to the fundamental influence of this
book, most of the later systematic projects that could be related to the poetics of cinema continue in an investigation
of Hollywood cinema (e. g. Przylipiak 1994, Thompson 1999, Keil 2002, Buckland 2006, Higgins 2016, Keating
2019), or refer to it comparatively (e. g. Brewster-Jacobs 1997, Thompson 2005, O'Brien 2005, Thompson 2005,
Kovács 2007). Less openly connected to Hollywood, but in some respects close to the poetics of cinema, are some
books on French cinema (Crisp 1997, Burnett 2017), German cinema (Müller 2003) or Nordic cinema (esp. Casper
Tybjerg's forthcoming book about writing aesthetic film history, or Seppälä 2016).
However, there is still no comprehensive and strictly bottom-up contribution to the aesthetic film history, which
from positions close to the poetics of cinema would focus on national cinema equivalent to the Czech one, as
described below. That is why all the mentioned works represent a methodological horizon of research potential
questions and analytical tools for this project. However, they must not become a source of hasty causal explanations
(cf. Kokeš 2020, Kokeš forthcoming).
II. The basic features of the research, the methodological background:
This project wants to identify, describe and explain the principles of construction of feature fiction films, which
were shot in the Czech language between 1925 and 1933 and at the same time presented in standard Czech
commercial film distribution. As such, this project aims to move towards the knowledge of Czech cinema's aesthetic
history in a sense formulated by the research programme of poetics of cinema. As it has been said, the poetics of
cinema explores construction principles of film work regarding (a) their relationship to individual works and groups
of works and (b) their relationship to particular empirical conditions of the creation of these works in synchronic
and diachronic perspectives (cf. Bordwell 2008). In connection with these assumptions, this project wants to find
16 / 24 GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT
out whether, when, where, how and under what conditions certain aesthetic solutions of certain aesthetic problems
were more preferred than other aesthetic solutions – and why just these.
Why write aesthetic history just of Czech cinema? Without concern for the social-cultural reasons for the worth
of knowing our traditions, there is, above all, a Czech cinema position in the world cinema history, which we can
consider as particular in several aspects (none of them is aesthetically evaluative). First, with more than two thirds
of preserved silent fiction films, it seems to be one of the world's best-preserved national cinemas (cf. Cherchi Usai
2019: 206-208). Thanks to this, it is possible to reach a relatively plausible awareness of its aesthetic history without
relying on knowledge only from torsion of perhaps rather unconventional works. Second, as will be explained
below, Czech cinema has had stable annual production and standard national commercial distribution since the mid-
1920s. Third, the national production of Czech cinema represents a highly above-average part of the distribution
offer throughout its history compared to many European countries (cf. Thompson 1985: 136, Kokeš 2020: 37).
Therefore, we can consider the possible consequences of the long-term relatively strong position of Czech
cinema production in its own film distribution. Although international influences and trends impact Czech
filmmakers, they are also motivated to present an alternative to an international distribution offer. Simultaneously,
due to its low export power and relatively small national film market, they had not been externally motivated to
standardise their films in the ways national cinemas with relatively big film market and significant cinematic export
might be. If these hypotheses prove valid, Czech cinema's aesthetic history can represent a remarkable example of
the alternative development of narrative and stylistic standards in terms of international cinema history. However,
in order to reach similar conclusions, it is necessary to understand such a history first – and not through top-down
comparisons with already identified international trends and already recognised trajectories of development in
aesthetic standards of export-strong cinemas (more on this argument Kokeš 2020).
Why does this project focus just on the period 1925–1933? As follows from my research findings so far, until
1924, we can recognise certain aesthetic continuities within the steadily cooperating creative collectives (Pojafilm,
Wetebfilm – and the community of filmmakers around Jan Stanislav Kolár and Karel Lamač). Each group
represented the continuity developed for several years in the sum of preferred narrative and stylistic solutions to the
feature film's artistic problems. At the level of production culture, it is a successive formation of a filmmaking
community, whose representatives will have a significant influence on the shape and practices of Czech cinema
partly until the Protectorate period, partly until the end of World War II and partly even until the end of the 1950s.
However, from the perspective of poetics, we can barely speak of a unified national cinema or its shared procedures,
principles, and preferred solutions. These groups of films from the early 1920s did not de facto compete, and their
role in the national distribution offer was negligible. They thus represent parallel lines of several collective poetics,
which do not refer to one shared poetics in a sense defined above.
After a two-year crisis in 1923 and 1924, however, a significant and complex change in the system took place:
In general, in terms of cultural and industrial history, it can be argued that Czech films became a full-fledged part
of film distribution since 1925 and 1926. Their creators began to compete for funds and the audience – and lobbied
for official state support, which they did not start to receive earlier than 1932. In effect of this process, they have
shifted from previous variations of foreign aesthetic trends to adapt local themes and subject matters. The pressure
to create a stable technical background was increasing (Klimeš 2016, Večeřa 2019). Thus, the research questions
on the principles of construction of films come to the fore. To what extent were these principles shared? To what
extent were these principles unified? It is appropriate to examine the forms of dis/continuity with models developed
within particular creative groups in previous years.
However, in terms of the industrial history of film, we are still talking about a kind of "pre-studio era". Although
filmmakers used the facilities of available Prague studios (Vinohrady, Kavalírka), we can talk about more
significant pressure on standardisation of filmmaking practices only with the beginning of sound in the early 1930s
and especially with the opening of modern Barrandov studios in 1933. In the following of the current knowledge
of production history, the beginning of a studio system should be considered to a greater extent only in the mid-30s
with further development of production practice (including an emphasis on a stable form of a screenplay), with
even more nuanced division of labour and with increasing emphasis on specialisation and hierarchisation of
positions not only on technical but also on managerial level (cf. Szczepanik 2009, Večeřa 2019). The year 1933
thus represents a significant turning point in terms of production history, when one can ask about the meeting of
two continuities. In what ways the studio's demands for systematisation of labour and standardisation of procedures
were harmonised with the practices and sets of preferred solutions from the previous periods when filmmakers
GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT 17 / 24
adopted them probably unsystematically and rather without externally determined standards? The proposed project
of systematic research into the poetics of Czech cinema from 1925 to 1933 makes it possible to answer this question.
At the same time, it is an aesthetically de facto unexplored period, which we do not yet understand at all from
the positions of poetics. The only relatively known and critically acclaimed Czech silent films or partially sound
films are those that are close to internationally shared ideas about a high-quality or artistically significant film (e. g.
Batalion, 1927; Erotikon, 1929; Takový je život, 1929; Tonka Šibenice, 1930; Extase, 1932), or those that feature
the later film star Vlasta Burian (e. g. Milenky starého kriminálníka, 1927). However, this project aims to understand
the principles applied to ordinary films and understand shared norms or co-existing sets of norms in terms of
preferred solutions to artistic problems, resulting from a thorough analysis of a large sample. Does this mean that
the aesthetic history of Czech cinema should not also ask what were the exceptional, high-quality, or artistically
significant films? No, it does not. It rather means that if it asked such questions, it should only be actually aware of
what all, and in what ways Czech films were and why that. It has not yet happened and again, the proposed project
wants to make a solid basis for such awareness as well.
How will be the research sample of films for detail analysis generated? Following the corpus defined above, the
research sample is built in such a way as to enable to analyse of particular production seasons, few years’ long
periods as well as the entire period. Due to the number of preserved films from the researched period, it is no longer
feasible to analyse every single film in detail. The sample, therefore, makes up 33% of the total feature films
production from each year. More particularly: 20% of each year films were generated randomly, so any personal
preferences would not influence the selection of them, and 13% of each year films will be added due to other criteria
(e. g. critical evaluation, audience attendance, genre diversity, proportional representation of production
companies). Thus, the final sample will contain 73 feature films that meet the parameters set above: a fiction film
of more than five reels; the original Czech language of subtitles or sound; standard Czech commercial distribution.
(For example, language versions are excluded from the sample. Thanks to this fact, we will eventually be able to
consider to what extent construction of these films differed or did not differ from the major Czech film production
standards.)
How will the films in the sample be analysed and further used? If the film is not newly digitised without affecting
the original image composition, it will be digitised and then carefully analysed shot by shot by myself in
a standardised procedure. (I have already seen all the films in the previous stages of my research from 35mm film
prints in the National Film Archive screening room.) In the first phase of the research, each film will be reflected
primarily as a separate artwork. In other words, each film will be analysed as a unique system, of which
constructional principles need to be sensitively understood to provide the bottom-up understanding of the principles
behind a larger group of films. In the following second phase of the research, the conclusions will be confronted
with archival research of primary sources and analysis of available secondary sources to find empirically based
explanations of the found patterns, principles, conventions, and preferred sets of solutions. I base the formulation
of analytical categories on my previous theoretical, analytical, and historical research (e. g. Kokeš 2014, 2015,
2016a, 2018). Overall design of the research process loosely follows the already mentioned book The Classical
Hollywood Cinema (Bordwell-Staiger-Thompson 1985, cf. Kokeš 2019).
In a more detail, in the first phase, analytical attention will focus on ways of dealing with the film narrative, the
fictional world, and the style. The film narrative will be examined first as a design involving the overall arrangement
of the film work, the relationships between the parts and the whole, its internal logic. Second, the film narrative
will be analysed as a process that seeks to guide the viewer's attention step by step regarding what, when, and why
it is communicated with them this way. The fictional world will be examined in terms of dealing with characters
(as its inhabitants), their goals and their functions, in terms of the construction of fictional space-time and in terms
of its semantics, where this world has some values, some rules and some order. Film style will be understood
primarily as a set of devices and techniques that serve as tools to create a narrative and fictional world.
Simultaneously, however, the film style in the sense of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound
represents a design of its kind that can achieve expressive effects independent of narrative, create decorative patterns
or refer to symbolic meanings.
With the completion of each production year's analysis, data and findings on films from that year will be
collected and evaluated on an on-going basis. As such, the production year is an arbitrarily chosen unit, which will
allow a large amount of data to be continuously clarified and supplemented by more precise questions.
Simultaneously, following the focus of the project, the analysed films will be understood as an effect of the creative
18 / 24 GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT
work of the filmmakers' community at a certain time, place, and under certain conditions. Therefore, an on-going
part of the analytical work will consist in the formulation of more general questions associated with possible
decision-making processes of complex problem-solving (cf. Baxandall 1985, Bordwell 1997, Burnett 2008). A
separate research area will also be questions related to the beginning of sound in the sense of a creative problem
that the filmmakers had to deal with. I will be interested in the degree of functional in/equivalence between the
devices and techniques used by Czech filmmakers in the early sound era and the devices and techniques filmmakers
had been using in pre-sound periods, especially concerning narrative design, narrative process, and film space
construction (cf. Altman 1992, Miller 2003, O'Brien 2005, Szczepanik 2009, Kokeš 2020).
Only in the next phase of the project will be sought empirically grounded explanations of the discovered patterns
and constructional principles. It will be a process of finding historical explanations, analysing available information
about the technology used, development and production processes, and the more general filmmaking conditions. In
other words, the second phase of the project will – on the background of already achieved findings – consider
questions of artistic construction concerning specific mode or modes of film practice, which constitute relatively
integral systems, "including persons, and groups but also rules, films, machinery, documents, institutions, work
processes, and theoretical concepts" (Bordwell-Staiger-Thompson 1985: xiii). This phase will take the form of
researching primary sources in the National Film Archive, the National Archive and The Museum of Czech
Literature, searching for discussions in the trade and popular press, reading and listening to commemorative
interviews with filmmakers in the Centre for Oral History, and consulting reliable Czech and foreign secondary
literature. Once approximate conceptions of local standards, continuities and partial trajectories are available, I will
compare them (a) with foreign films that the creators could see and to which they could react in their work, (b) with
the history of other art forms in the Czech lands or broader artistic traditions that may have influenced the preferred
choices (history of literature, history of theatre; for the influence of radio and the recording industry on early Czech
sound film cf. Szczepanik 2009).
In the last phase of the project development, more general theses will be tested and possibly adjusted by
confrontation with the rest of the whole corpus of films from the researched period. However, these films are not
meant to be digitised and analysed shot by shot. This process will take place only in the form of film screenings:
either in available digital form (NFA screeners, DVD), or – in the case of digitally unavailable films – in National
Film Archive from 35mm film prints.
At what new research findings is the project aimed? At the most specific and solid level, it should offer a very
elaborate conceptualisation of the principles according to which Czech films were constructed in the studied period,
which achieved a wide range of effects and which functionally utilised the available techniques and technologies.
At a more general level, it aims to identify, describe, and explain whether, when, where, how and under what
conditions certain aesthetic solutions to certain artistic problems were more preferred than other aesthetic solutions
in the researched period. At an even more general level, it offers the most plausible cues on why these solutions,
why then, why right there, why in these ways, and why under these conditions. At the most general level, it will
enable us to understand probably the least elaborated period of the aesthetic history of Czech cinema. At the same
time, it may be just the period in some of the artistic traditions of using style, narrative and the fictional world have
roots and to which Czech cinema has been reacting for the next almost one hundred years.
III. The time schedule and the supposed outcomes of the project:
The first year (2022)
January – July: analytical research on the silent films from the research sample
- digitisation of not yet digitised silent films from the sample by the National Film Archive in Prague (24 films)
- systematic close analysis of the sample of silent films from 1925 to 1930 (46 films)
- on-going evaluation of findings
- visit the Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival in Bologna (festival focused on film history and film preservation,
incl. thematic workshops on film restoration and film history, and meetings of the research community)
August – December: analytical research on the sound films from the research sample
GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT 19 / 24
- film screenings of silent films from the sample in the National Film Archive, Prague
- systematic close analysis of the sample of sound films from 1930 to 1933 (27 films)
- on-going evaluation of findings
- visit the Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto film festival in Pordenone (festival focused on silent film history and
its research, connected to the Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema)
- writing rough drafts of the book chapters based on analytical research
Supposed outcomes:
- A conference paper presented at an international conference or a workshop
- Preparation of a research seminar at my university, preparation of packages of topics for B. A. and M. A.
theses, which can further draw on the research and make possible to deal with more specific research problems in
the area
- Paper proposed for publication in peer-reviewed journal (Jsc)
The second year (2023)
January – July: research on the production conditions, practices, and technology in the silent period (1925–
1930) concerning the explanations of the findings obtained through the analysis of the sample of films
- archival research in National Film Archive, Prague (esp. Institutional Collections, Estates)
- archival research in National Archive, Prague (Institutional Collections, Estates)
- archival research in personal archival files in The Museum of Czech Literature
- a search in the Czech film trade press till 1930
- a search in Interviews and Audio Recordings (National Film Archive, Prague; press)
- a search in daily papers, weeklies, and magazines publishing film reviews, reportages, film promotions till
1930 (due to discussion on aesthetic standards)
- visit the Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival in Bologna
August – December: research on the production conditions, practices, and technology in the sound period
(1930–1933) concerning the explanations of the findings obtained through the analysis of the sample of films
- analysis of the already collected archival materials, which relate to the period of the beginning of the sound
- a search in the Czech film trade press till 1933
- a search in Interviews and Audio Recordings (National Film Archive, Prague; press)
- a search in daily papers, weeklies, and magazines publishing film reviews, reportages, film promotions till
1933 (due to discussion on aesthetic standards)
- visit the Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto film festival in Pordenone
- additions and revisions of already written drafts of the book chapters in the light of new findings plus writing
rough drafts of the chapters on production contexts
- preparation and writing of a more extensive article that would generalise the current findings and relate them
to the current knowledge in the field of the international debate on writing the aesthetic history of cinema of this
period
- additional viewings of non-fictional films and available feature films from the years 1925-1933 (in
cooperation with the National Film Archive), which were not part of the sample and whose viewings will allow to
test and correct on-going hypotheses and conclusions
Supposed outcomes:
- A conference paper presented at an international conference or a workshop
- A visiting lecture on the research at a foreign university
- Two papers proposed for publication in peer-reviewed journals (Jsc, Jimp; at least one of them will be in
English)
The third year (2024)
Wrapping up the archival research and the search in press (identifying possible additional samples of press or
archival sources to be searched)
20 / 24 GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT
Revision of the previous findings and interpretation, summarising the research
Writing the first rough version of the whole book during the spring, its comprehensive revision, editing and
taking into account external comments during the summer, and the finalisation of the manuscript during the autumn
Visit Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival in Bologna
Supposed outcomes:
- A conference paper presented at an international conference or a workshop
- Paper proposed for publication in peer-reviewed journal (Jsc)
- Book monograph on this topic; the Czech-written manuscript will be finalised, proposed to a publisher and
published
IV. The cooperation with foreign researchers
The most productive research partnership represents the cooperation with Colin Burnett from Washington
University in St. Louis. Colin is one of the most progressive scholars of my generation in the history of theoretical
poetics, film style research, functional relations between aesthetics and cultural processes, and various traditions of
film (and trans media) narrativity. We are in a dynamic contact with Colin and consider the possibilities of future
cooperation based mainly on the discussion of analytically based research in the area of aesthetic history. I assume
that I could discuss with Colin the project's overall concept, the possibility of refining the methodology, the use of
specific analytical concepts, and the sustainability of some theses.
I am also in an active contact with Casper Tybjerg from the Danish Film Institute and Copenhagen University.
He is involved in the history of thinking about writing aesthetic history on the one hand and in its actual writing on
the other one, especially in connection with silent Nordic cinema. However, Casper is also more generally an expert
on international aesthetic standards in European silent cinema history. He is currently working on his comparative
research of the so-called Kammerspiel film in Denmark and Germany in the 1920s. As I suppose, Casper will
therefore be able to advise me, especially in the second phase of research, when filmmakers working both for the
Czech and German film industry will be dealt with. The same area will also be discussed with an expert on the
German film industry, Joseph Garncarz from the University of Cologne.
I have mainly been consulting with Mirosław Przylipiak from the University of Gdansk for a long time on more
general possibilities of poetics knowledge of cinema. Moreover, Polish cinema seems to be, so far, comparable to
Czech cinema in a relatively intense concentration of its own reasonably stable production primarily for its domestic
audience. In this context, we often solve various historical issues on the Czech side or Polish side with Michał
Pieńkowski from The National Film Archive in Warsaw, who in his research deals with the Polish film industry in
the 1920s and 1930s. Michał will undoubtedly be an essential source of understanding the parallels between these
national cinemas, especially in the early thirties.
I occasionally consult with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
on some more general points of departure and more general hypotheses of my research. In addition to Mirosław
Przylipiak, I intend to consult some – on the contrary – very particular issues related to the detailed analysis of the
film with Warren Buckland from Oxford Brookes University, despite the fact that he is not very interested in the
history of silent cinema. At my invitation, Colin Burnett, Casper Tybjerg, Mirosław Przylipiak, Warren Buckland,
Joseph Garncarz also taught lectures and led seminars at our Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture
at Masaryk University, as well as other experts on poetics of cinema and stylistic film analysis.
The proposed project should also be an opportunity to get such systematic stylistic research of not globally
influential cinema(s) into an international academic debate because we still do know so little about it.
V. Readiness of the applicant and his workplace to implement the project; research cooperation:
The department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture systematically cultivates international cooperation; its
members are involved in many international research groups and projects. The department regularly hosts worldrenowned
academics from film and media studies for lectures, workshops, and conferences. Simultaneously, the
poetics of cinema is one of the leading research areas in which invited lecturers work and are international experts.
GRIS ORBEON 1.3.6.2-SNAPSHOT 21 / 24
The department participated in large projects implemented under the Education for Competitiveness Operational
Programme and supported by the European Social Fund and cooperated in the worldwide "Hobbit Research
Project", co-ordinated by Aberystwyth University. Currently, the department is implementing two large
collaborative grant projects: "Relational database, map projections and data visualisation used for promotion,
education and support of tourism" and international project "Animation studios in Gottwaldov and Lodz (1945/47-
1990) - Comparative Collective Biography" in cooperation with University of Lodz.
As the applicant, I am proposing this project after years of analytical research into the poetics of Czech cinema,
for which, unlike in this case, I did not need grant support. I have already published several comprehensive articles
in the Czech academic journals (Iluminace, Theatralia) on this topic. Each of them contributed formulated new
research problems connected to aesthetic history of Czech cinema, whether those essays dealt with broader
questions of the narrative and stylistic history of early Czech film, more particular problems of (writing) history of
film acting and staging in Czech cinema till 1918, proposed poetics perspectives on the beginning of the studio
system or the history of film genres (see chapter I above). The importance in this regard has especially the article
on the opening of the Barrandov Studio in 1933, which will be published as a chapter in a forthcoming book on
Barrandov at the Amsterdam University Press (Kokeš forthcoming). At the same time, I prepared a more general
contribution to the international history of poetics methodology and its applicability to the history of Czech cinema
(Kokeš 2019), and I also published a book Rozbor filmu [Film Analysis], on possibilities of formal analysis
proposing a new approach (Kokeš 2015), which became widely used at Czech universities and has been awarded
by film professionals' organisation ARAS as well as film studies scholarly society CEFS.
I also edited a forthcoming collection of essays on the history of the Czech film narrative, style, and industry to
1922, which resulted from several years of my research seminars with students and supervising their B.A. and M.A.
theses. My previous primary research compared a massive amount of data in formulating an original narrative
theory of seriality, based on an analysis of 400 television serial works. The result of the project was priced by
Masaryk University Dean's award for the best doctoral dissertation (2014) and later published as a book Světy na
pokračování [Worlds to be Continued] (Kokeš 2016). This experience provide me with a solid methodological
background for the proposed project.
All research activities at MU are carried out with the intent to meet the criteria of high professional quality and
socially beneficial and significant goals (Directive No. 5/2015 Research Ethics at MU).
The strategic plan of Masaryk University for the years 2021–2028 is a fundamental conceptual development
document determining the direction of MU in education, research, social role, gender equality, and its infrastructural
development for the next years. Human resources vision and strategic goals relevant to The European Charter for
Researchers & the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, which is integrated into the Masaryk
University Strategic Plan for 2021- 2028.
The commitment to gender equality is reflected in a number of regulations and strategic documents on the MU
level and in the Action Plan of Faculty of Arts, MU have been submitted already to European Commission within
the HR Excellence in Research Award process. The university currently gives a concise account of measures
concerning the implementation of gender equality in the various areas.
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Altman, Rick (1992): Sound Space. In Sound Theory / Sound Practice. New York: Routledge, pp. 46–64
Bartošek, Luboš (1985): Náš film: Kapitoly z dějin (1896–1945). Praha: Mladá fronta
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Biltereyst, Daniel – Maltby, Richard – Meers, Philippe, eds. (2019): The Routledge Companion to New Cinema
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Česálková, Lucie (2014): Atomy věčnosti. Praha: NFA
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Dissertation. Praha: Univerzita Karlova
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Keil, Charlie (2002): Early American Cinema in Transition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press
Klimeš, Ivan (2013): Kinematograf! Věnec studií o raném filmu. Praha: Casablanca
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Holman, Roger, ed. (1982): Cinema 1900/1906. Brussels: FIAF
Keating, Patrick (2019): The Dynamic Frame. New York: Columbia University Press
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produkce a zubní extrakce. Theatralia, vol. 17, n. 1, pp. 330-352
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českých adaptacích s jednou britskou zacházkou. In František A. Podhajský, ed.: Fikce Jaroslava Haška. Praha:
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Kokeš, Radomír D. (2016b): Světy na pokračování. Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění. Praha: Akropolis
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30, n. 2, pp. 21-57
Kokeš, Radomír D. (2019): Norms, Forms and Roles. Panoptikum, vol. 29, n. 2 (22), pp. 52–78
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Kokeš, Radomír D. (2020): Česká kinematografie jako regionální poetika. Otázky kontinuity a počátky studiové
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