Point of view of a sales agent : Tomáš Žůrek (National Film Archive Czech)

The mission of the National Film Archive, Prague is to preserve cinema heritage, to further its public understanding, and to facilitate the development of the Czech audio-visual industry and film culture. The NFA is one of the ten oldest and largest film archives in the world. It was set up in 1943 and in 1946 it became a member of the International Federation of Film Archives – FIAF. In 1997 it became a founding member of the Association of European Film Archives and Cinematheques, ACE (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes).

What does the MIFC represents to you? 

It´s perfect place where we can meet our partners who are also focused on classic films. We sell solely classics films, sot hat´s a huge advantage, because all the participants are interested in classics and it makes everything easier. 

What is the importance of the classic films on the Czech film market?

It´s quite difficult to distribute the classics Czech films theatrically, but in case we work with the classics like with the new distribution releases (we prepare a new trailer, posters, merchandising etc. and we sufficiently promote the film), the films are well received and screened by cinemas all over the Czech Republic. However, we can focus only on one or two films every year, because the market doesn´t allow us to distribute more films, because there is no demand for more classic Czech films. About foreign, I don´t know the exact results because we don´t distribute them, but I´m pretty sure that people are more interested in foreign classics than the Czech ones. 

How the Czech government is involved in restoration, distribution and edition of classic films? 

National Film Archive in Prague is established by the Ministry of Culture of Czech Republic and the Archive is partly financed by the Ministry, so, in a way, we can say that all restorations made by the Archive are co-financed by the Ministry.  However, the most of the restoration projects in the Czech Republic are financed by international funds (the project of Digital Restoration of Czech Film Heritage supported by an EEA Grant) or by the private fundation (Nadace české bijáky). 

How the Czech classic cinema is received outside of Czech Republic? 

It´s well received. The biggest success came with the digitally restored sci-fi Ikarie XB 1 (Jindřich Polák, 1963) with was premiered at Cannes Classics in 2016 and the films was sold to five countries afterwards and screened at more than twenty festivals all over the world. We also signed the deal for thirty Czech films with Janus Films/Criterion Collection earlier this year and we also sold six films to Japan this year, because of the Year of Czech Culture in Japan in 2017. Our recent restoration, Black Peter (Miloš Forman, 1964), was premiered at the Venice Classics this year, so the international festivals are interested in Czech classics, as well.