Editors' Note»

You are entering the 2012 Film Yearbook, published for the twenty-first and for the last time in the form you were accustomed to. The National Film Archive decided to take a vigorous step forward, and it began to build a web portal for the information about Czech cinematography that will make the data of current Film Yearbook and Film Overview available online with all the hypertext possibilities that the Internet offers. It will be available in the second half of 2014 at www.filmovyprehled.cz.

Despite this primarily technological development, the scope of monitored data will be maintained – and it was truly remarkable in the Film Yearbook. When it was last published as a printed publication in 2006, it numbered 850 pages. The Film Yearbook database stores over 17,000 entries of films, more than 6,000 companies and over 38,000 personalities. Since then, the National Film Archive published the yearbook five times in the form of a CD–ROM due to its expanding extent.

None of this would exist if the editors of the Film Yearbook did not work carefully and responsibly every day. They tirelessly collected data, and above all, they verified what they found again and again. Trust but verify, is a strategy that paid off many times to the Film Yearbook and that brought it success in the position of authority, to which those interested in true data about Czech film, film companies, personalities, festivals or grants look to.

In the past twenty-one years, the team of the Film Yearbook helped to build all of this under the leadership of Mrs. Ivana Tibitanzlová. As the Editor-in-Chief, she watched over the accuracy of data and also helped with the key change from "paper" Film Yearbook to the digital version on CD - ROM. She deserves recognition from everyone in the NFA.

The National Film Archive decided to devote this year’s publication, which you have just opened, to its readers and not to release it on a CD or to charge a fee, but to publish it on its website for free.

You will not find a calendar of film events this year, because it was not in editorial capacities to monitor this constantly growing chapter. We also refrain from translating names of Czech films into English. You can find English translations only for titles for which translation already exists.

We hope that the data in the 2012 Film Yearbook will help you in your endeavor and that you will be able to work even better with the data in the upcoming Internet version.

Štěpánka Matúšková

Portal NFA Project Manager