Catenaccio a la Drnovice Or Journey to the Beginning of Time of Economic Transformation
Drnovické catenaccio aneb Cesta do pravěku ekonomické transformace
Radim Procházka / Czech Republic / 2010 / 57 min.
Documentary-maker Radim Procházka approaches the now half-forgotten case of the Drnovice football club with investigative fervour and some ironic insight. His film charts the miraculous rise and sharp decline of a local football team from Drnovice, which comprises a community of only 2,200 people. Using the story of the football club's chairman Jan Gottvald and his rise to the top of the business world, the filmmaker eloquently and often very funnily recalls the practices of self-styled "entrepreneurs" from that era, i.e. money laundering, asset-stripping, unpaid loans and even bribing football referees whenever it was necessary. The story of the Drnovice football club is typical for Czech football, politics and business in the 1990s. On the one hand, there were surprising successes and celebrated triumphs. On the other hand, the story also involves mysterious sponsors, corruption and doping. Philosophers Miroslav Petříček, Václav Bělohradský and Petr Fischer comment on the film's key themes, including the elaborate system of asset-stripping mechanisms. Procházka's uncompromising film about recent Czech history uses the example of the "Drnovice case" to graphically illustrate the way in which it was possible to scam huge sums of money in the country. Unfortunately, this was mostly done with impunity.