14/11/2005

First is the good news. Czech productions continue unabated their domination of the national box office, as they have been doing for most of the autumn season. But there is also bad news: Czech films alone are not enough to turn the tide on the plummeting number of cinema visits which, so far, is down as much as 25 percent compared to 2004. No less than four Czech films feature in the top-10 of the box office statistics for the week ending November 4.

Jiri Strach’s fairy-tale Andel pane (Lord’s Angel; produced by Czech TV and Hoodoo) about an angel that tries to save his heaven position through an earth mission, tops the lists, having taken € 50,000 from 19 screens in a single weekend. It dethroned another Czech film, Petr Vachler’s Doblba, (produced by Vachler Art Company) which had kept the top spot for five weeks but has now fallen to number three. Bohdan Slama’s award winning Something Like Happiness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bohdan Slama
interview: Pavel Strnad
film profile] (o.t. Stesti); produced by Negativ and Pallas Films) continues to do well; having been watched by more than 144,000 people so far in its eight weeks in theatres, it keeps a steady place in the top-10, as does another Czech film, David Moravek’s Hrubes And Mares Friends Come Rain or Shine (Hrubes a Mares jsou kamaradi do deste; produced by Prvni verejnopravni a Cinemart) . While the free fall of cinema visits is not a Czech exclusivity but rather a worldwide trend this year, the results here are alarming, say experts. Statistics released recently, show that in the first nine months of the year Czech screens have registered almost seven million visitors – down two million compared to the numbers for the same period last year.

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