School Assignment

synopsis

The promotional film School Assignment was shot at the Baťa factories’ film studios in Zlín by director Elmar Klos and cinematographer Alexander Hackenschmied. Two language versions – Czech and German – were produced at the time, both featuring the same humorous script but with different casts. Both versions have been preserved in the National Film Archive.

biography

Elmar Klos (1910–1993) filmed a number of adverts (in both Czech and German), newsreels, feature pieces, promotional films and documentaries based on his own scripts whilst working at the Baťa film studios in Zlín. After the Second World War, he became involved in the nationalisation of the film industry and served as director of Krátký film, but fully realised his creative potential through his collaboration with director Ján Kadár, with whom he made, for example, the award-winning film The Shop on Main Street (1965).

Alexander Hackenschmied (1907–2004) was a key figure in Czech interwar photography and film. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States and became part of the New York avant- garde scene. In 1943, in the film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, co-directed with Maya Deren), he revisited the motif of the doppelganger, which he had also employed in his directorial debut, Aimless Walk (1930).

film details

director:	Alexander Hackenschmied, Elmar Klos
producer:	Lukáš Hanzal