Filmmakers want the archive in the center, not behind Prague

Prague - Over a thousand people signed a petition in three days demanding that the new headquarters of the National Film Archive (NFA) not be established on the outskirts of Prague but in the center. Currently, the archive is located in several places in emergency or rented spaces. Although construction in Nové Butovice has been in preparation for several years, according to the petition's authors, this institution should be located in the center of the metropolis.
    The authors of the petition are director Helena Třeštíková, cameraman Marek Jícha, and director Vít Janeček. Together with those who signed the petition, they are appealing to the Minister of Culture, the government, and the Prague City Hall to support their initiative.
    They remind that the planned new headquarters of the NFA cannot fulfill that part of the archive's work that requires contact with the public. The new NFA director Michal Bregant also emphasized in his concept, with which he was appointed to his position, that the headquarters of such an important cultural institution as the NFA should be in the center of Prague.
    "I have nothing against the film archive's depository being outside the city, that is fine, but the library, Ponrepo cinema, or the research rooms need to be in a location that is easily accessible to both professionals and the general public," Bregant told ČTK.
    According to him, it is also possible to save public funds: the reconstruction of an already existing building will be cheaper than constructing a new one, even with the technological demands. The funds for the new NFA headquarters should come from the Program for the Care of the National Cultural Treasure, which the government approved in 2006 and commits to investing ten billion crowns into the headquarters of several national cultural institutions.
    The new NFA headquarters was supposed to cost approximately 350 million crowns. There is also a plan to expand the depository in Hradišťko in the Prague-West region. The tender for the completion of the depository cost Bregant's predecessor, the long-time NFA director Vladimír Opěla, his position.
    Former Minister of Culture Jiří Besser dismissed him last December, reportedly because Opěla refused to sign the tender provider selection in the form of a lottery without a written order from the ministry; according to Respekt, Opěla received the instruction to announce the tender from a high-ranking official at the ministry. Besser disagreed with this, stating that he dismissed Opěla due to repeated managerial mistakes.
    There are problematic two contracts concluded with the architect of the depository, Martin Kotík; Opěla acknowledged minor mistakes he made in the contracts but rejected the minister's suspicion that he was wasting public funds. He had been at the head of the archive since 1992 and turned it into an internationally recognized research and archival center, a unique archive of domestic and world film heritage.