31/10/2006

Czech film distributors, and subsequently filmmakers, are breathing a sigh of relief this week as news of increasing cinema admissions have been revealed.

According to figures released by the Union of Film Distributors, 8.65m cinema tickets were sold for the first nine months of the year – up almost 25% on the 7m purchased in the same period in 2005.

Film distributors believe that if this pattern holds, the total number of tickets sold in 2006 will be much better than the 9.5m in 2005. The Czech box office all-time record low for yearly admissions since the introduction of multiplexes was 8.4m in 1999.

Of course, the rise in cinema attendance this year follows the general worldwide trend and is also based on the quality of pictures released this season, both national and international.

Most of the Czech films that have premiered so far in 2006 have done extremely well and three Czech films are in the top six of October’s box office charts. Money Makes the Man (Prachy delaj cloveka), an action comedy by Jiri Chlumský, and Jan Hrebejk’s Beauty in Trouble (Kráska v nesnázích), a social drama about a restless young woman, are both set to reach or exceed 300,000 admissions before year’s end. David Ondricek’s Grandhotel could also end up with 150,000 admissions.

In a time when film piracy has made big advances in the country, the news is more a significant development than just a positive line in an accounting graph for the Czech film industry as a whole. More admissions means more money for Czech filmmakers as 1 crown (€ 0.37) of every ticket bought goes to the state and from there back to Czech filmmakers through the national Film Fund grants.