The reorganization of film production went the furthest in Czechoslovakia between 1963 and 1968, finally permitting film to exist as an art, and allowing the independent development of a plurality of heterogeneous talents and styles. In fact, this production concept became a prevalent notion throughout Eastern Europe, but its realization never quite came to be. What follows applies in varying degrees to all the Eastern European film industries. The basic idea was that of small workshops with a stable state subsidy, the workshops increasingly acting as customers vis-a-vis the studios and the laboratories. The workshops, or production groups, each of which in Czechoslovakia produced on average of five or six films annually, were headed by a producer-scenarist team, and they each had their own art council, while directors were free to work with various groups, depending on the circumstances surrounding the origin of the specific film. The centralized evaluation and approval of films was gradually limited as the production groups' autonomy increased until finally, in 1968, they were entirely independent. The idea was gradually accepted that the entire system of film distribution, including the import and export of motion pictures, should be governed by the cultural and artistic role of film, while television would gradually take over the role of the main source of popular entertainment. By 1968, the overall reorganization of film production and distribution was practically ready, having returned to the original concept of a nationalized cinematography that had been altered and realtered over the years.
The gradual success of this reorganization, as well as that of numerous specific films, generated constant friction and tests of strength between film-makers, on the one hand, supported by the majority of film critics, and on the other the still dominant, but shaken, state power, which simultaneously acted as the sole financier. The Union of Film and Television Artists (FITES) carried the banner of the film-makers in this conflict, becoming, as time went on, the first specialized labor organization in Czechoslovakia with the admitted aim of being a partner, and, when necessary, an opponent, to the state in establishing conditions for artistic film work. The key positions in the union in these years were occupied by film journalist Ludvik Pacovsky and director Ladislav Helge. The latter, a leading representative of the generation of 1956, and one of the main targets of the 1958 neo-Stalinist counteroffensive, for several years sacrificed his own promising film career to the struggle to create the prerequisites for the film work of others. He did not make a single film between 1963 and 1968, but nonetheless was the central figure of the Czech film industry. It was not until 1968 that he completed "Shame" ("Stud"), the portrait of a political functionary who is corrupted by power and ends his life as a total failure, the hero of "Great Solitude" 20 years later. From the political point of view "Shame" was one of the most outspoken works of the entire period. This film was unfortunately weakened by Helge's long absence from the director's chair.
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