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A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Provocumentary shown at Flavin Auditorium

‘It will be a nice big bash/And if you got no cash/Get a loan and scream/I want to fulfill my dream’ goes the jingle for ‘Czech Dream,’ the fictitious hyper-market, after which the film ‘Czech Dream’ is named.

The film, touted by the ‘Economist’ as ‘the funniest European film of the year,’ will be screened on Wednesday night as part of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Produced by two Czech film students, Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, the ‘provocumentary,’ as described by the filmmakers, chronicles the hype surrounding the opening of a new big-box superstore in a Prague suburb. Though the store itself doesn’t actually exist, the directors spend millions of dollars on marketing and promotions to draw shoppers to a ribbon-cutting ceremony where they watch and film what happens.

Following the 1989 fall of communism in the Czech Republic, the country saw a huge influx of foreign capital, jump-starting the development of Wal-Mart-styled superstores. Just in the past five years, 125 such mega-markets have been erected across the country.

This kind of super-charged development and the capitalist propaganda that accompanied it prompted the filmmakers to provide a commentary on the changing social atmosphere as Czechs negotiate the dual forces of capitalism and globalization in a formerly communist country.

In the film, the grand opening draws crowds of thousands, all searching for rock-bottom prices and seduced by the possibility of finding everything their hearts desire under one (nonexistent) roof. The throngs of people arrive, only to find 11 film crews and a canvas store fa’ccedil;ade stretched across construction scaffolding.

As the hoax comes to light, the film raises the question of blame as it implicates advertisers and politicians as producers of capitalist propaganda and manipulators of public opinion. ‘We used the strength of advertising so that its weight was used against its bearer,’ explain the filmmakers in an interview.

Additionally, the film similarly blames shoppers for believing the scam, prompting the disappointed shoppers to laugh at themselves and examine the propaganda to which they have fallen prey. In this sense, the film draws on the country’s rich national history, picking at a still sore scab.

‘We grew up in an advertisement-free country, with Communist propaganda all over the place. And then it turned the other way around.’ Commercial propaganda has now taken the place of state propaganda, but citizens and consumers continue to be duped time and time again.

For a number of reasons, the young filmmakers manage to communicate such a ‘cheeky treatise on capitalism’ due to the dual perspective with which they view contemporary society. Having witnessed the onslaught of capitalism once the Eastern Bloc opened up to the West, Czechs of this age group don’t view consumer culture with the well adjusted eyes of the Western world.

By the same token, having been spared the darkest days of communist control, the filmmakers do not echo the unilateral, pro-capitalist views of older generations of Czechs. Festival curator Catherine Portuges explains, ‘Some young people have the privilege of being annoyed with the capitalist system, as maybe people all over the world are. There is a generational divide because there are those who lived through the more repressive and very traumatic part of [communism] that still feel that with all its failings and all its obvious problems, [capitalism] is better than what they had before.’

The film and the festival at large seek to explore the pros and cons of communism versus capitalism, with both relief and nostalgia. Portuges explains, ‘We thought ‘Czech Dream’ would be a good example of how a certain shift in mentality occurred, from a state-supported socialist system to what was, at the very beginning, a kind of wild capitalism that didn’t really know exactly where things were going.’

‘Czech Dream’ will be screened Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Flavin Auditorium as part of the 16th annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival.

Caroline Scannell can be reached at [email protected].

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