Defended MA Theses

Defended BA and MA Theses can be found in the Thesis Repository of Charles University.

Defended PhD Theses

Čihák, Martin: Skladebné postupy filmových avantgard. (2004)
Unfortunately, the thesis cannot be found online.

Hanáková, Petra: Circulation of views: from the renaissance spectator to the male viewer in feminist film theory. (2006)
The paper deals with the hitherto unexplored topic of the development of vision theories in film theories of the second half of the 20th century. Its central part was published as part of the book The Challenge of Perspective: The Image and Its Spectator from the Painting of the Quattrocento to Film and Back (ed. P. Hanáková, Academia 2008).

Svatoňová, Kateřina: Unbound images: archeology of (Czech) virtual space. (2010)
This thesis offsets the theory of detached, immersive, and virtual space into the Czech environment, and through the concept of “unbounding images,” it is trying to bring a new perspective on the history of Czech visual arts. Its book edition is being prepared by the Academia publisher house.

Bláhová, Jindřiška: A Tough Job for Donald Duck: Selling Hollywood, Czechoslovakia, and Selling Films behind the Iron Curtain, 1944-1951. (2011)
The work created in the cotutelle program deals with hitherto unexplored areas of Czech-American film relations and Hollywood’s approaches to Eastern Europe, especially its local economic interests. For her dissertation, she received the Bolzano Prize of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in 2011. Book edition is being prepared.

Czesany Dvořáková, Tereza: The idea of a Film Chamber. The Bohemian-Moravian Film Union and continuity of centralizing tendencies in the film industry in the 1930s and 1940. (2011)
The key theme of this thesis is the development of the film-industry self-regulation during the years immediately preceding the occupation of the Czech Lands by Nazi Germany and the period of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Already in the First Republic (1918– 1939), the association structures were characterized by highly hierarchical relations and encompassed all areas – film production, film distribution, and the cinema system. The predominant role was played by film industry associations and the largest unions of film workers. These organizations pressed for the solution of the protracted legislative deficits which complicated the day-to-day operation of the film industry.

Poláková, Sylva: The convergence of film and architecture. The case of Prague. (2015)
This dissertation examines the as yet untethered practice of the convergence of film and architecture in public municipal spaces against the backdrop of the idea of the relocation of the moving picture. Since this is an interdisciplinary practice whose forms and operations are influenced by a host of dynamics, the initial film perspective is supplemented by related themes from the spheres of architecture, public municipal space, and the organisation of culture and the applied arts, including advertising.

Žilová, Jana: Figural Thinking: Theory and Practice. (2015)
This research presents an examination of the figural theory as established by Jean-François Lyotard in his work Discourse, figure (1971). Figural theory groundwork proved to be underpinned within the psychoanalytical framework as in the classical dreamwork and concept of transitional space as elaborated by D. Winnicott.

Slováková, Andrea: Film festivals in relation to the margins of cinema. (2016)
The dissertation called Film festivals in relation to the margins of cinema focuses on the presentation of mainly experimental films at film festivals. In particular, the work analyzes specialized shows of experimental film, introduces a historical excursion to the presentation of the film avant-garde in relation to the phenomenon of film festivals. Methodologically, however, it is based on an approach interdisciplinary borrowed from the political sciences, discursive new institutionalism that adapts to the field of festival studies.

Čechová, Briana: Flashback as a narrative means for expressing memory. Czechoslovak New Wave in the mirror of flashback. (2016)
This dissertation covers two levels and related goals: it theoretically incorporates the „Flashback“ theme in the scholarly environment, thus creating a background for further research, and concentrates on the period of the Czechoslovak New Wave on the level of analysis. Henri Bergson´s philosophy of memory is the philosophical background for investigating the flashback as the fundamental means of expression of cinematic narration, capable of capturing the functioning of memory.

Kupková, Marika: From Scribe to Ministerial Counsellor: The Involvement of Jiří Mařánek in the Cinematography of the Forties and Fifties. (2017)
The thesis focuses on the involvement of Jiří Mařánek in the management of the Film Department of the Ministry of Information during the years 1945 – 1948. His ministerial engagement is related to the contemporary strengthening of the importance of literary preparation of the film and to the associated state dramaturgical supervision. Jiří Mařánek belongs to the circle of writers connected on one hand through their affiliation with the interwar avant-garde movements, on the other hand by their postwar involvement in the power apparatus that ended by the political and economic changes in the late forties and fifties.

Španihelová, Magda: Our (Beautiful, Healthy, Modern and National) Body: Visual Representation of Physical Culture and Sports in the Context of National Identity Formation in the Interwar Czechoslovakia. (2017)
This Ph.D. thesis describes a visual representation of partial aspects of physical culture and sports in interwar Czechoslovakia. The general phenomenon of social affiliation and national identification is critically observed in four central chapters, together with the usage of symbolic figures that are in periodical visual productions exposed as different body types.

Hasan, Petr: The Relationship of the Roman Catholic Church to Cinematography in the Czech Lands between 1918 and 1948. (2020)
After the First World War, the Catholic Church intensified its interest in a world that was becoming ever more secular and began to look for new means of actively and creatively taking part in cultural affairs. The cinematography was one of the areas in which this trend became most apparent. It was shortly after the invention of the cinematograph that various ideas and plans regarding how to deal with film began to emerge among Catholics.

Hudac, Nicholas: Picturing the Nation: Slovak National Identity in the Age of the Mass Produced Image. (2020)
This dissertation focuses on the role that the mass-produced image (e.g. lithographs, photographs, and cinema) played in the creation and solidification of Slovak national and ethnic identity not only among Slovaks living in Slovakia but also Slovaks living abroad in America from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries.

Krůček, Václav: Intuition and vacuum of film imaging. (2020)
Krůček’s Ph.D. thesis explores the impacts of the specific moments of film within the context of its ontological potential. It follows forms of intervention into stability and continuity of visual re-presentation, which may induce intuition of the new. The opening chapters are devoted to the image “in itself”, presented as the duration of a “self-modulating” shot, whose apparent stillness initiates (with the participation of sound) the pressure of off-screen field.