PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Klimeš, Ivan
TI  - Cinematographic Sokol
DP  - 2024 Jun 17
TA  - Iluminace
PG  - 121--168
VI  - 36
IP  - 1
AID - 10.58193/ilu.1774
IS  - 0862397X
AB  - The Sokol Physical Education Association, with its mass membership, with roots deep in the 19th century and high social credit due to the national content of its programme, became the largest operator and builder of cinemas in interwar Czechoslovakia. Of the approximately 1,850 cinemas in the country, Sokol owned about 40%, meaning that of the more than 3,000 Sokol branches, about a quarter operated a cinema. These were mostly rural cinemas and 80% of them played only once or twice a week. The article traces how in the 1920s the Prague Sokol headquarters tried to unite the Sokol cinemas into one gigantic association whose members would obtain films from rental companies exclusively through the headquarters. The idea of a massive, centrally controlled chain dictating the rental fees to the rental companies failed due to the weak interest of the Sokol units in the regions. Nevertheless, the Union of Sokol and Other Biographers was formed, operating on the cooperative principle, which brought together about a hundred cinemas and arranged films for them with the rental companies. Licences for cinema operation in Czechoslovakia were, with exceptions, granted only to associations, municipalities and other institutions, so the article also examines the phenomenon of the association cinema in general and the question of the whole licensing system inherited from the Austro-Hungarian era.