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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Aktualita 1937–1938. Cˇeskoslovensky ́ zvukovy ́ ty ́deník / TschechoslowakischeTonbildschau / Slovensky ́ zvukovy ́ ty ́zˇdenník
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
5
Thematic issue / Section thématique
2005-03-01
2022-10-29
2005-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Pavel Zeman
2005/03/01
Karlova Univerzita, Praha
2036-461X
6
en
Aktualita 1937–1938. Cˇeskoslovensky ́ zvukovy ́ ty ́deník / TschechoslowakischeTonbildschau / Slovensky ́ zvukovy ́ ty ́zˇdenník
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/18951/16681
5
AKTUALITA 1937–1938. ČESKOSLOVENSKY ZVUKOVY TYDENIK /
TSCHECHOSLOWAKISCHE TONBILDSCHAU / SLOVENSKY ZVUKOVY
TYŽDENNIK
Ivan Klimeš, Pavel Zeman, Karlova Univerzita, Praha




   Production of multiple language versions of films has generally been aimed at inter-
national audiences, rather than at domestic audiences made up of people who speak the
language of a given version. In the attempt to create the best possible conditions for pro-
moting a foreign language version of a film abroad, distributors, and at times compe-
tent government authorities, have adopted a variety of strategies. For example, a
German language version of the British film Atlantic (1930, Ewald André Dupont) was
sent to Czechoslovakia expecting that German would be accessible to more people. At
that time, about 40% of the population in Czechoslovakia understood German. So the
film was indeed accessible to more people, but the German language triggered a nega-
tive reaction that would not have been provoked by English. In addition, German ver-
sions were a way of avoiding, or at least mitigating, difficulties in the distribution of
Hungarian films within Slovakia, where audiences responded with nationalist animos-
ity to the Hungarian language. In 1938, the Ministry of Trade’s Filmový poradní sbor
(FPS, Film Advisory Board), the office responsible for the issue of import licenses, decid-
ed to give precedence to those Hungarian films that were available in a German version.
In the relevant treaty with Hungary, it was settled that Czechoslovakia, which pro-
duced more films in German than Hungary, should “export all of our German language
films to Hungary and import German language films of Hungarian origin in the same
number that the [film production] monopoly produces, plus as many Hungarian lan-
guage versions of Hungarian films as is necessary to make up the difference.”1
Therefore, under certain conditions, the language of the film was sometimes more cen-
tral than was the film. Language had, and still has, its own symbolic dimension, and the
fact that one is communicating in a particular language can at times be more important
than what one is communicating in that language. This was especially the case in an
atmosphere of high nationalist tension such as the one which undoubtedly existed in
Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.
   This aspect of multiple language versions forms the backdrop for the bilingual pro-
duction of the Czechoslovakian film weekly, Aktualita. The main function of this doc-
umentary production can be summed up in three words: news – promotion – propa-
ganda. If one is considering the issue of multiple language versions, Aktualita is a spe-
cial case. The production of these films was not aimed abroad, at foreign countries,
rather, it was exclusively domestic, intended for the multi-ethnic population of the
Republic of Czechoslovakia.
   First, some basic information about newsreels in Czechoslovakia. Newsreels pro-
duced by companies such as Fox, Paramount, Ufa and PDC dominated the
Czechoslovakian market. Under a Ministry of Trade regulation, the Prague branches of

­62                                                          CINEMA & Cie, no. 6, Spring 2005
                                                                       AKTUALITA 1937–1938




these companies were required to add Czechoslovakian clips to each issue of their
newsreels, corresponding to 20% of total footage. On the average, about ten copies of
the newsreels of these companies were distributed over the territory of Czechoslovakia.
   Among the Czech/Czechoslovakian periodicals, the only one to run continuously for
a long time was Elektajournal, which was produced on an entrepreneurial and purely
private basis from 1925, appearing from 1930 to 1937 under the title Československý fil-
mový týdeník (Czechoslovakian Newsreel). Its market competitiveness was almost
non-existent. Even during the sound era, it remained a silent newsreel, and it would be
misleading to overrate the size of the audience reached by its two copies, circulated
only in Prague, or its poor technical resources. But the name of its publisher, Karel
Pečený, comes up again in the list of names of those who, on April 13, 1937, established
the company registered under the name “Aktualita, komanditní společnost, Karel
Pečený a spol. v Praze” (Aktualita, Limited Partnership, Karel Pečený and Co. in Prague)
with the stated purpose of publishing a weekly sound newsreel. For our purposes, the
participation of the state in this step is of primary interest: until this time, the govern-
ment had not been in any way involved in the production and distribution of news-
reels. When it did become involved, it was through the publishing firm Orbis, where
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a representative.2 The “Československý filmový
týdeník Aktualita” can be considered to have been a “state” newsreel in the sense that it
presented the official policy of the state in a various arenas of public life. The Ministry
of Foreign Affairs also regularly set tasks for the film crew of Aktualita.3 In the 1930s,

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IVAN KLIMEŠ, PAVEL ZEMAN

many newsreels were already being produced under state supervision, not only in total-
itarian regimes with centralized governments like those in Germany (Ufa), the Soviet
Union (Soyuzkinožurnal) and Italy, but also in other countries, such as Austria (Öster-
reich in Bild und Ton), Hungary (Magyar Film Iroda), and Poland (P.A.T.), as well as
those in Romania and Bulgaria.4
   Of course, the Aktualita newsreel also reflects the attitude of the state towards film
propaganda in particular and towards propaganda in general. The late emergence of
Aktualita can be put down to a general failure on the part of the Czechoslovakian gov-
ernment to fully recognize the possibilities that modern film propaganda had to offer.
Right up until the dramatic events at the end of the 1930s, the Czechoslovakian author-
ities continued to hold steadfast to their conviction that a truly democratic state should
not resort to the tools of propaganda, but rather, should persuade its citizens through a
more rational approach. This attitude, incidentally, is documented by a brochure from
as late as 1938 (!), Propaganda v demokracii a diktaturách (Propaganda in Democracy
and Dictatorships) by Alfréd Fuchs, an official in the Press Division of the Office of the
Czechoslovakian Government.
   Aktualita first came out in August, 1937. At the time, fifteen copies of the Ufa news-
reel, Zvukový týdeník Ufy, supplied from Berlin, and ten copies of the PDC Zvukový
týdeník were in circulation in the Sudetenland.5 The mandatory 20% additional
Czechoslovakian content was made up of harmless items relating to the country’s his-
tory or geography. Nine copies of Paramount’s newsreel, Zvukový týdeník Paramountu,
and nine copies of Fox (i.e. Fox Movietone News) were also being circulated.
   Aktualita was launched in August 1937, with 2 copies going out to 20 cinemas. The
following autumn there were 10 copies (including one in German) in 250 cinemas (out
of a total of 1850 cinemas), and in May, 1938, a total of 17 copies (including one in
German) were in distribution. Aktualita reached the 25-copy mark in November, i.e.,
under the Second Republic, after the Munich agreement had been signed and then
accepted by the Czechoslovakian government. This success therefore came after the
effective separation of the Sudetenland which, among other things, resulted in the loss
of 545 cinemas. A combination of several factors was responsible for this increase: the
increase in nationalist sentiment among the Czech population of what remained of
Czechoslovakia, the doubling of Aktualita, creating the A and B versions. The closing
down of cinemas was also the result of the regulation making the screening of
Aktualita mandatory and any manipulation of its content expressly illegal.6
   In the threatening atmosphere of the country at that time, towards the end of the
1930s, interest in the official Czech film news reporting was obviously considerable.
Interest in the German language version was a different matter entirely, as the dispro-
portionate number of copies in circulation suggests. The German version of the official
Czechoslovakian newsreel failed completely to gain a foothold in the Sudetenland. It
came onto the scene at a time when the political situation had already progressed too
far: in the border regions even Czech feature films (including German language ver-
sions) were already being boycotted by German cinemas. Whether these boycotts were
due to pro-Hitler sympathy on the part of the cinema owners or to fear of violent
demonstrations by the supporters of the Sudeten German Nazi politician Konrad
Henlein, the final result was the same. Economic factors were also influential: cinemas
were not only cultural institutions, they were also businesses that depended on audi-
ence numbers, which were, in turn, influenced not only by program selection but also

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                                                                       AKTUALITA 1937–1938

by the business’ reputation and status in its community. Another aspect to consider is
purely a practical one: cinemas had long-term contracts for the supply of newsreels and
they didn’t switch brands. We did some sample research: in the northern German city
Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz), for example, not one of the five local cinemas switched
newsreel brands at any time between August, 1937 to March, 1938. One cinema showed
Ufa, another PDC, a third Paramount and the other two screened Fox. In August, 1938,
production of the German edition of Aktualita was stopped, due to a total lack of inter-
est from cinema owners in the German regions of the republic. By way of “substitu-
tion,” Aktualita, as mentioned above, began to come out in two versions.
   The misguided attempt of the governing Czech majority to use the film newsreel as a
medium for communication with the German minority recalls the similarly inade-
quate exploitation of radio in this sense. Czechoslovakian radiojournal was airing reg-
ular broadcasts in German as early as 1925, but did not truly reflect the political, eco-
nomic and cultural importance of the German minority in the Republic of
Czechoslovakia.
   We should mention at least two of the people involved in producing Aktualita. The edi-
tor-in-chief was the filmmaker Jan Kučera, also a noteworthy film critic and theorist with
a structuralist bent. The German version of Aktualita was directed by Prague born Willy
Haas, who had worked from 1920 to 1933 as a theatre, film, and literary critic in Berlin,
where he published the famous journal Die literarische Welt. After Hitler came to power,
the Jewish intellectual decided to return to Prague, where in April, 1934, he took over the
film column in Prague’s excellent German language daily, the Prager Presse.
   Before we begin to compare the German and Czech versions of Aktualita, a few words
about the source materials. The situation is a dismal one. Although Aktualita was
issued every week from summer 1937 until spring 1945, only three complete issues
have been preserved from the entire period. There remains also a rather large amount
of individual episodes, which have been sorted and spliced together in thematic groups.
No one knows when, by whom, or why the collection of episodes were put into this for-
mat, though it seems to have been done as early as the 1940s. It has made the material
very difficult to work with. However, the possibility exists that someday we will be able
to put some issues of Aktualita back together.

  AKTUALITA           total number of episodes          number of preserved episodes
                      1937         1938                 1937         1938
  Czech edition       263          521                  129          218
  German edition      259          413                  13           4

  At any rate, all of the advertising material from Aktualita has been preserved, as have
the texts of the commentary that were submitted to the censoring authorities (the com-
mentary does not, however, include the transcripts of recorded speeches or interviews).
So, our primary source of information consisted of written, not filmed materials. Using
them, and the episodes preserved in pieces, it is possible to create a quite coherent pic-
ture of film news reporting as a whole in the years from 1937-1945.
  The Czech and German editions of Aktualita both retained the title – Aktualita
(Newsflash/Current News). Even in the German version, the newsreel had a Czech title,
never Aktualität. In other respects, one can detect differences between the individual
components of the two versions, some substantial and some minor, although not in

                                                                                        ­65
IVAN KLIMEŠ, PAVEL ZEMAN




­66
AKTUALITA 1937–1938




                ­67
IVAN KLIMEŠ, PAVEL ZEMAN

every issue. The differences we have identified can be classified into five basic cate-
gories, but the absence of the actual film material makes it impossible to exclude the
possibility that other categories exist.7

  1) Change in the order of episodes.
  As a rule, when ordering the different episodes, one tried to fill the first slot with an
episode that was somehow significant or interesting to the target audience, and that
would serve at the same time to localize the reporting.

  2) Omission of an episode without a replacement.
  Generally, the reasons behind such changes were, in our judgment, political in
nature. Examples: no. 4/1938, episode The President of the Republic among Students;
no. 21/1938, episode Celebrations of the National Theatre; no. 34/1938, episode Do you
want this? (i.e., “Do you want our country to meet a similar fate?”), which followed an
episode of the bombing of Canton.

  3) Substitution of one episode for another.
  a) To localize reporting.
  This generally involved episodes about cultural events or sports, sometimes ones of a
historical or geographical nature. Examples: no. 10/1938 – “Aktualita’s humorous
sketch,” Jára Kohout puts his son to sleep from the Czech version was replaced in the
German version with the episode, Falkenau: Franz Heidler, Cheb’s Folk Songbird; no.
14/1938 – the episode Dr. h. c. Jan Bat’a from the Czech edition was replaced in the
German version with the episode Traditional Artistic Craft in Reichenberg.
  b) To avoid undesirable political connotations.
  A side effect of these changes was the emphasis of the localized character of the news-
reel. Episode: no. 6/1938 – the clearly political episode Five Years of the 3rd Reich was
replaced in the German edition with the cultural episode On the 70th Anniversary of
the Death of Adalbert Stifter; no. 8/1938 – instead of the clearly political episode
[Parliamentary] Deputy Jaksch on Czech-German Understanding, the German edition
had a cultural episode apparently about some aspiring film starlet The Next Film
Generation: Christa Abbel;8 no. 9/1938 – a episode dedicated to the Czechoslovakian
Premier Homage to Prime Minister Hodža was replaced, in the German version, with
the episode Sudeten-German Sledding Championships on a Difficult Natural Track.
  In the above mentioned examples, the changes led to the omission of political sub-
jects, but there were also changes in which political subject matter was added. Example:
no. 4/1938 – in the place of the episode Women’s Floor Exercises. Preparations for the
10th All-Sokol Rally, in the German edition came Reception of Diplomatic Corps in
Berlin’s Reich Chancellery.
  In 1937, the German edition of Aktualita contained a total of 259 episodes, of which
32 didn’t appear in the Czech version and were acquired exclusively for the German edi-
tion (in exceptional cases from abroad). In 1938, there were 40 episodes as such, out of
a total of 413.

  4) Differences in commentary of an episode.
  These tended to be politically motivated and in extreme cases bordered on misinter-
pretation.

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                                                                           AKTUALITA 1937–1938

  a)
  Czech version:

  Od té doby stal se Adolf Hitler hlavou státu a pronesl letos v Krollově opeře vyčer-
  pávající kritiku své pětileté vlády nad Třetí říší.
  Při té příležitosti útočil nejostřeji na Anglii a jejího zahraničního ministra Antony
  Edena, který odstoupil.9

  German version:

  Inzwischen wurde Adolf Hitler selbst zum Staatsoberhaupt und trug dieses Jahr in
  der Krolloper eine Ausführliche Analyse seiner 5-jährigen Regierung vor.
  Bei dieser Gelegenheit griff er England und seinem Außenminister Antony Eden
  an, der sein Portefeuille zurücklegte. Er sprach ferner über die Auslandsdeutschen.

  b)
  Czech version:

  Dožínky, slavnost česko-německé spolupráce
  […]
  Ministr Spina řekl: “Nejsme jenom sudetoněmeckými sedláky, jsme především
  občany tohoto státu.”
  10.000 aktivistických Němců, kteří se zúčastnili krásné slavnosti, odmítlo nezod-
  povědnou politiku těch, kteří se ohlížejí za hranice tohoto státu.10

  German version:

  Erntefeier
  […]
  Minister Dr. Spina sagte: “Wir sind nicht nur sudetendeutsche Bauern – wir sind
  vor allem sudetendeutsche Bürger dieses Staates.”
  10.000 deutscher Bauern, die sich an der schönen Feier beteiligten, manifestieren
  ihren Willen zu loyaler Zusammenarbeit im Rahmen der Tschechoslowakischen
  Republik.

  5) Various combinations of all of the preceding types.

  From the differences that have been mentioned, we can conclude that the
Czechoslovakian state chose to use film propaganda directed at the German minority
in what was already an extremely tense situation. In the German edition of Aktualita,
the state presented itself as one that noticed and was directly interested in the cultural,
sporting, and social life of the German minority. It tried to avoid, or at least minimize,
possible conflicts and potentially soothe inflamed tempers. For example, it avoided
turning the political life of Sudeten Germans into subject matter, and carefully avoided
truly explosive subjects in pictorial news reporting. In those pre-television times, these
strategies had the character of a delayed pictorial illustration.
  Aktualita began to be produced and distributed in the Slovakian edition in October,

                                                                                                ­69
IVAN KLIMEŠ, PAVEL ZEMAN

1938. This was another misguided attempt to use Czechoslovakian film propaganda to
help rescue the republic, this time by trying to strengthen the identification of the
Slovakian population with the Czechoslovakian state instead of limiting its focus to
Czechs. Thus, Aktualita was potentially designed to work counter to the efforts of
Slovakian politicians to achieve autonomy. Once again, it declared that the state was
interested in Slovakia, in its cultural life, and this time, also in its political life. Only
three issues were produced, probably edited by the Slovakian journalist Ivan Kovačevič.
Publishing of the Slovakian version of Aktualita was stopped, not only due to competi-
tion from the Slovakian edition of Ufa, but also because of the interest clearly articu-
lated by the newly established Slovakian government to have a Slovakian cinema that
was far from the Czech. This was afterwards carried out at a legislative level. The case of
Slovakia is an interesting example in Europe of the late emergence of a national cinema
by order of the state.



1 Excerpt from the 137th meeting of the FPS, January 20, 1938, p. 9, Praha, Státní ústřední
   archiv v Praze (State Central Archives in Prague), Ministerstvo průmyslu, obchodu a živnos-
   tí (Ministry of Industry and Trade), Filmový poradní sbor (Film Advisory Board), box 2345.
2 Many years later one of the instigators of the Aktualita project would recall that the negotia-
   tions about starting the newsreel were complex and lengthy (beginning in February, 1936)
   and that the unreserved support of President Edvard Beneš contributed to their success.
3 See Archiv ministerstva zahraničních věcí (Archives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs), III. sekce
   (III. Division), box 403.
4 Jan Kučera, among others, mentions this, in his broadcast lecture of Filmové žurnály, broad-
   cast September 11, 1935 on Radiojournal (headed Jak se dělají filmové žurnály). See also Jan
   Kučera, “Filmové žurnály,” Iluminace, Vol. 2, no. 1 (1990), pp. 83-88.
5 Both were published in a German version, though up to now we don’t know what proportion
   of the number of distributed copies were accounted to each of them. We hope that future
   archival research will be able to answer this question. From 1938, a Slovakian version of the
   Ufa newsreel was also published.
6 We have drawn this information from the available literature, as yet we have no archival
   source to corroborate it.
7 One could hypothesize, for example, that different musical accompaniment was used for the
   same episode, or certain shots were left out of a given episode, or put in a different order.
8 Wenzel Jaksch was a pro-Czechoslovakian, anti-Hiter deputy to the Czechoslovakian
   Parliament for the German Social Democracy’s party.
9 Translator’s note: “Since then, Adolf Hitler has become the head of state and this year at the
   Kroll Opera he gave an exhaustive critique of his five-year rule of the Third Reich.
   On this occasion his sharpest attack was directed to England and its foreign minister,
   Anthony Eden, who has stepped down.”
10 Translator’s note: “Harvest Celebration, a celebration of Czech-German cooperation. […]
   Minister Spina said: ‘We are not only Sudeten German farmers, we are above all citizens of
   this state.’
   10 000 German activists who took part in the merry celebration rejected the irresponsible
   politics of those who are looking beyond the borders of this state. ”


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