Filmová studia v předsálí svých zdejších dějin

In the context of higher education, cinema studies first emerged during the 1950s with the FAMU Film School in Prague, though it was taught by publicists rather than scholars of the field. By the end of the 1960s, cinema studies had moved to the Charles University Faculty of Arts, and, in Brno, to the Faculty of Arts of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (now Masaryk University). When in the context of normalisation these departments were dissolved, it would take several years to re establish them, and only then merged together with theatre studies. Film research gained a promising new home once more in the 1960s at the Film Institute, established as a departmental institution in 1963 under the auspices of the state film initiative. However, the so called interdisciplinary research administration was dissolved in 1973 for political reasons, and meaningful research all but died out for many years. In the memoir section of the article, the author describes the revival of research in the second half of the 1980s and founding of Illumination, a quarterly for the theory, history and aesthetics of film.