Associate Professor

e-mail: petr.szczepanik@ff.cuni.cz

Petr Szczepanik (1974) is an Associate Professor at Charles University, Prague. He has written books on the Czech media industries of the 1930s (Konzervy se slovy, 2009) and on the state-socialist production mode (Továrna Barrandov, 2016). Outcomes of his research of the state-socialist producer practices in East-Central Europe were partly published also in Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Culture (Palgrave, co-edited with Patrick Vonderau, 2013). His latest book is Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective (Springer 2020, co-edited with Pavel Zahrádka, Jakub Macek and Paul Stepan). His forthcoming book is tentatively titled Peripheral Producers: Screen Industries in East-Central Europe (Bloomsbury 2021).

He led the EU-funded FIND project (www.projectfind.cz, 2012–2014), which used student internships for a collective ethnography of production cultures. In 2015, he was the main author of an industry report on practices of screenplay development for the Czech Film Fund. He is now leading the Screen Industries in Central and Eastern Europe Research Group (Charles University, a part of the EU-funded project KREAS), and working on three research topics: 1) the digitalisation of the Czech audiovisual industry, and the impacts of the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy on film and TV distribution, and 2) practices and professional identities of post-socialist producers, 3) online strategies of public service media.

In 2005, he was awarded a 2-year post-doc fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) to work at the research group (Graduiertenkolleg) “Mediale Historiographien,” Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Germany. Between September 2009 and March 2010, he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the Summer Semester 2018, he was a Visiting Professor (Gastdozent) at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany. In the Winter term of 2019, he was a Visiting Professor at the Carleton University, School of Journalism and Communication, Ottawa.

Petr Szczepanik has also been engaged in public policy development, writing industry reports for the Czech Film Fund, the Czech Ministry of Culture, and the Czech public service television.

Education:

• 2008, Docent (Associate Professor), Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, habilitation thesis title: „Počátky zvukového filmu a česká mediální kultura 30. let“ [“The Coming of Sound Film and Czech Media Culture of the 1930s“].
• 1998–2002, Ph.D., Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Film Studies. PhD thesis title: „Filmy, které vidí vlastní vidění. Strategie intermediality a reflexivity v současném filmu“ [“Films That See Their Own Seeing: Strategies of Intermediality and Reflexivity in Contemporary Cinema”].
• 1994–1998, Mgr., Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Film and Theatre Studies.

Work experience:

• 2016 – today, Associate Professor (docent), Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Film Studies Department
• 2002 – 2016, researcher, National Film Archive, Prague, the Research Department
• 2002 – 2016, Associate Professor (docent), Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Film and Audiovisual Culture Studies
• 2005‒2006, postdoc, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Graduiertenkolleg Mediale Historiographien

Research interests:

• Contemporary screen media industries in the Czech Republic and East-Central Europe
• Production studies
• Online strategies of public service media
• Globalization of media production
• Czech media culture of the 1930s

Research projects (selected):

• 2020–2023, Strategies for Public Service Television’s Sustainability in the Internet Era: Best Practices Based on International Comparison. Technology Agency of the Czech Republic,
• 2020–2022, Czech Film Viewer in the Era Of COVID-19: Reduction of Impacts of the Crisis and New Opportunities for Film Distribution (with Mgr. Jan Hanzlík, Ph.D. as the main researcher). Technology Agency of the Czech Republic,
• 2018–2021: Research on the Impact of Current Legislation and the European Commission’s Strategy for Digital Single Market on Czech Audiovisual Industry: Evaluation of the Copyright System and Preparation of Cultural Politics within the DSM (with doc. Mgr. Pavel Zahrádka, Ph.D. as the main researcher). Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, TL01000306.
• 2017–2019, Postsocialist Producer: Collaborative Creative Practice in the Czech Screen Media Production after 1989. Czech Science Foundation, 17-13616S.
• 2012‒2014, The Partnership Network of Universities and Film Industry („FIND“ ‒ Film INDustry Internship Project), Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, l.07/2.4.00/31.0015, www.projectfind.cz.
• 2010–2013, History of Barrandov Studios in Terms of Organization and Culture of Film Production. Czech Science Foundation, P409/10/1361.
• 2008–2011, Local history of Cinema: Brno and Cultural History of Cinema to 1945 (with Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D. as the main researcher). Czech Science Foundation, 408/08/0959.
• 2005–2007, History of the Czech Film Thought – an Anthology. Czech Science Foundation, 408/05/0868.
• 2003–2006, Cultural-historical context of transition to recorded synchronous sound in Czech cinema. Czech Science Foundation, 408/03/D174.

Participation in international and national organizations:

• Editorial board member – Springer Series in Media Industries book series
• Editorial board member – Media Industries Journal (www.mediaindustriesjournal.org)
• Advisory board member – Cinéma &Cie (http://cinemaetcie.net)
• Advisory board member – Necsus (https://necsus-ejms.org)
• Advisory board member – SERIES. International Journal of TV Serial Narratives
• The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories (http://filmtheories.org)
• SCMS ‒ Society for Cinema and Media Studies
• Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS), co-chair of the Work Group Screen Industries
• Czech Society for Film Studies (www.cefs.cz)

Academic scholarships abroad:

• Winter Semestr 2019, Visiting Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
• Summer Semester 2018, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Visiting Professorship (Gastdozentur), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
• September 2009 – March 2010, a Fulbright scholarship, „Visiting Scholar“ at the University of California, Los Angeles, with the project „Post-1989 American Film Production in Prague“.
• January 2005 ‒ December 2006, postdoc, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Graduiertenkolleg Mediale Historiographien. Scholarship from Die deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), for a research project called „Coming of Sound and Audiovisual Culture of the Late 1920s and Early 1930s. Implications for Theory of Media History“.

Selected publications – books:

• Szczepanik P., Zahrádka P., Macek J. and Stepan P. (eds.), Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective. Cham: Springer 2020.
• Szczepanik P., Továrna Barrandov. Svět filmařů a politická moc 1945–1970. Praha: NFA 2016.
• Szczepanik P., Kotišová J., Macek J., Motal J., Pjajčíková E., Studie vývoje českého hraného kinematografického díla. Praha: Státní fond kinematografie 2015. Online: http://fondkinematografie.cz/assets/media/studie%20komplet.pdf.
• Szczepanik P., Vonderau P. (eds.), Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures. London ‒ New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2013.
• Szczepanik P., Konzervy se slovy. Počátky zvukového filmu a česká mediální kultura 30. let. Brno: Host 2009.
• Anděl J., Szczepanik P., (eds.), Cinema All the Time. An Anthology of Czech Film Theory and Criticism, 1908‒1939. Praha: Národní filmový archiv; Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications 2008.
• Szczepanik P., Anděl J. (eds.), Stále kinema. Antologie českého myšlení o filmu 1904‒1950. Praha: Národní filmový archiv 2008.
• Mareš, P., Szczepanik P. (eds.), Tvořivé zrady. Antologie současného polského myšlení o filmu a audiovizuální kultuře. Praha: Národní filmový archiv 2005.
• Szczepanik P. (ed.), Nová filmová historie. Antologie současného myšlení o dějinách kinematografie a audiovizuální kultury. Praha: Herrmann a synové 2004.

Selected publications – articles and chapters:

• Szczepanik P., HBO Europe’s Original Programming in the Era of Streaming Wars. In: A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation, eds. L. Barra and M. Scaglioni. New York and London: Routledge 2020.
• Szczepanik P., „Dear Netflix…“: Informal Local Intermediaries on the Periphery of the Global VOD Market. Journal of Popular Television, Vol. 8, 2020, No. 3, pp. 321–326.
• Szczepanik P., Channels and Barriers of Cross-Border Online Circulation: Central and Eastern Europe as a Digital Periphery. In: Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective, eds. P. Szczepanik, P. Zahrádka, J. Macek and P. Stepan. Cham: Springer 2020, pp. 159–80.
• Szczepanik P., Macek J, Zahrádka P., Introduction: Theorizing Digital Peripheries. In: Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective, eds. P. Szczepanik, P. Zahrádka, J. Macek and P. Stepan. Cham: Springer 2020, pp. 1–31.
• Jedličková, J., Korda, J., Szczepanik P., An Academic Study of Research Literature on Czech Television: the Dawn of Taking TV Seriously. Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 15, 2020, No. 4, pp. 409–423.
• Zahrádka P. and Szczepanik P., The White Elephant in the Room: Implications of the Digital Single Market Strategy for Film and Television Distribution in the Czech Republic. In: Sundara Rajan M. (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Intellectual Property in Central and Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2019, pp. 238–258.
• Szczepanik P., Post-socialist Producer: The Production Culture of a Small-Nation Media Industry. Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 13, 2018, No. 2, pp. 207–226.
• Szczepanik P., Breaking Through the East-European Ceiling: Minority Co-Production and the New Symbolic Economy of Small-Market Cinemas. In: Julia Hammett-Jamart, Petar Mitric, a Eva Novrup Redvall (eds.), European Film and Television Co-production: Policy and Practice. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2018, pp. 153–173.
• Vašíčková, D. and Szczepanik P., Web TV as a Public Service. The Case of Stream.cz, the East Central European Answer to YouTube. Media Industries, Vol. 5, 2018, No. 2, pp. 69–91.
• Szczepanik P., Localize or Die: Intermediaries in a small East-Central European on-demand market. Cinéma&Cie. International Film Studies Journal, Vol. 17, 2017, No. 29, pp. 33–49.
• Szczepanik P., Postwar Czechoslovak Comedy, the Autonomization of Parody, and Lemonade Joe (1964). In: Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe: Film Cultures and Histories, eds. Dorota Ostrowska, Francesco Pitassio, Zsuzsanna Varga. London: I.B.Tauris 2017, pp. 102-119.
• Szczepanik P., Transnational Crews and the Post-socialist Precarity: Globalizing Screen Media Labor in Prague. In: Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, eds. M. Curtin, K. Sanson. Oakland, CA: University of California Press 2016, pp. 88-103.
• Pjajčíková E., Szczepanik P., Group Writing for Post-socialist Television. In: Production Studies, The Sequel!: Cultural Studies of Global Media Industries, eds. V. Mayer, M. Banks, B. Conor. New York ‒ London: Routledge 2015, 105‒120.
• Szczepanik P., „Veterans“ and „Dilettantes“. Film Production Culture vis-à-vis Top-Down Political Changes, 1945–1962. In: Cinema in Service of the State Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960, eds. L. Karl, P. Skopal. New York and Oxford: Berghahn 2016, pp. 71–88.
• Szczepanik P., The State-Socialist Mode of Production and the Political History of Production Culture. In: Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures, eds. P. Szczepanik, P. Vonderau. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, pp. 113‒134.
• Szczepanik P., Vonderau, P., Introduction. In: Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures, eds. P. Szczepanik, P. Vonderau. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, pp. 1‒12.
• Szczepanik P., How Many Steps to the Shooting Script? A Political History of Screenwriting. Iluminace, Vol. 25, 2013, No. 3, pp. 73‒98.
• Szczepanik P., Wie viele Schritte bis zur Drehfassung? Eine Politische Historiographie des Drehbuchs [“How Many Steps to the Shooting Script? A Political History of Screenwriting”]. Montage AV, Vol. 22, 2013, No. 1, pp. 99‒13.
• Szczepanik P., Globalization through the Eyes of Runners: Student Interns as Ethnographers on Runaway Productions in Prague. Media Industries Journal, Vol. 1, 2013, No. 1. Online: www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/article/view/23/67.
• Szczepanik P., Between Units and Producers: Organization of Creative Work in Czechoslovak State Cinema 1945‒1990. In: Film Units: Restart, eds. M. Adamczak, P. Marecki, M. Malatyński. Ha!art: Kraków 2012, pp. 271‒312.
• Szczepanik P., Mediale Zwischenwelten: Audiovisuelle Kunst in der Tschechoslowakei (1919– 1939) by Sarah Houtermans (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012). Slavic Review, Vol. 72, 2013, No. 4, 880‒882.
• Szczepanik P., Hollywood in Disguise: Practices of Exhibition and Reception of Foreign Films in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. In: Cinema, Audiences and Modernity. New Perspectives on European Cinema History, eds. D. Biltereyst, R. Maltby, P. Meers. London – New York: Routledge 2011, pp. 166–186.
• Szczepanik P., The Aesthetics of Rationalization: The Media Network in the Baťa Company and the Town of Zlín. In: A Utopia of Modernity: Zlín. Revisiting Baťa’s Functional City, ed. K. Klingan. Berlin: Jovis Verlag 2009, pp. 203‒215.
• Szczepanik P., Modernism, Industry, Film: A Network of Media in the Baťa Corporation and the Town of Zlín in the 1930s. In: Films that Work. Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, eds. V. Hediger and P. Vonderau. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2008, pp. 349‒376.
• Szczepanik P., Krieg der Patente. Die deutschen Elektrokonzerne und die tschechoslowakische Filmindustrie in den 1930er Jahren. In: Zwischen Barrandov und Babelsberg. Deutsch-tschechische Filmbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Roschlau. München: Edition text+kritik 2008, pp. 43‒56.
• Szczepanik P., Sonic Imagination; or, Film Sound as a Discursive Construct in Czech Culture of the Transitional Period. In: Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound, eds. J. Beck and T. Grajeda. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2008, pp. 87‒104.
• Szczepanik P., Speech and noise as the elements of intermedia history of the early Czech sound cinema. In: MLVs: Cinema and other Media / Versioni multiple: Cinema e altri media, ed. V. Innocenti. Pasian di Prato: Campanotto 2006, pp. 175–190.
• Szczepanik P., The „Birth“ of Cinema History: Coming of Film Sound and Media Inventing their Own Past. In: MLVs: Cinema and other Media / Versioni multiple: Cinema e altri media, ed. V. Innocenti. Pasian di Prato: Campanotto 2006, pp. 29–52.
• Szczepanik P., „Tief in einem deutschen Einflussbereich“. Aufführungs- und Rezeptionspraktiken deutschsprachiger Filme in der Tschechoslowakei in den frühen 1930er Jahren. In: Babylon in FilmEuropa. Mehrsprachen-Versionen der 1930er Jahre, ed. J. Distelmeyer. München: Edition Text + Kritik 2006, pp. 89–102.
• Szczepanik P., Modernität, Industrie, Film: Der Verbund der Medien in der Firma Bat’a und in der Stadt Zlin in den 1930er Jahren. In: Filmische Mittel, industrielle Zwecke: Das Werk des Industriefilms, eds. Hediger, P. Vonderau. Berlin: Vorwerk 8 2006, pp. 250‒281.
• Szczepanik P., Undoing the National: Representing International Space in 1930s Czechoslovak MLVs. Cinéma&Cie. International Film Studies Journal, 2004, No. 4, pp. 55‒65.
• Szczepanik P., Intermediality a (Inter)media Reflexivity in Contemporary Cinema. The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Special Issue: „What Is Intermedia?“, Vol. 8, 2002, No. 4 (Winter), pp. 29‒36.

Invited lectures and guest teaching (selected):

• “Integrating Digital Peripheries”, Carleton University, Winter semester 2019.
• Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz: three courses: “Online Distribution and Internet Television”, “Critical Media Industry Studies“, “Media Producers and Production Cultures”, Summer semester 2018.
• “Postsocialist Producer: Collaborative Creative Practice in the Czech Screen Media Production after 1989”, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Institut für Film-, Theater- und empirische Kulturwissenschaft, 14 June 2016.
• “The State-socialist Mode of Production and the Political History of Production Culture in Czechoslovakian film Industry”, Universität Bremen, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft, 9 December 2014.
• “Writing for the Red Screen: Screenwriters in the State-socialist Mode of Production in 1950᾽s and 1960᾽s Czechoslovakia”, London Screenwriting Research Seminar, University of London, 5 December
• “Globalization of Film Production: US ,Runaways‘ in Prague and the Role of Film Producer”, Kansas University, Kansas City, USA, 25 January 2010.
• “Modernism, Industry, Film: A Network of Media in the Baťa Corporation and the Town of Zlín in the 1930s”, Symposium „Picturing the Modern: Photography, Film, and Society in Central Europe, 1918‒1945“, Milwaukee Art Museum, USA, 3‒4 April 2008.
• “History of Noise in Media”, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA, 24 February 2006.
• “History of Noise in Media (Cinema, Radio, Phonography)”, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Germany, Summer semester 2006.