A few excerpts from a 2004 interview with director Jiří Menzel on making films under the Soviets:
Which period was best for you, the most happy, personally?
Jiří Menzel: It was in the 60s when I started. It was such an ideal time, ideal atmosphere, ideal place to make films. On one side, there was an ideological ease and plenty of topics for films, but on the other side there wasn’t total freedom, so there was a stimulus for creativity to break the ideological barrier…
I was lucky enough to have had an opportunity in filmmaking at that time and was able to make, together with others, a few films. It was a happy time period for me as a filmmaker. For me as a citizen, of course, a happy time is today. It is much better today than it was during the time of the Bolsheviks.
How difficult was it in the totalitarian regime to push a script through?
Jiří Menzel: Actually it was easier than it is today. Now you have to beg potential investors and talk to many people. You waste a lot of time if you don’t persuade them. The process was simple during the Bolshevik era. You had to know what stories were be approved and adjust to it. And if the story didn’t get approved, you just didn’t make that film. That was a standard procedure and it functioned quite well. You knew how far you could go and sometimes try to push the envelope a little bit further. Which later became possible. This experience, that the door of the censors could be gradually opened, came from the 50s and early 60s. Once in a while the door slammed in your face, but then it opened again. But you knew the rules of the game and realized that if you respected those rules you could make, within those boundaries, decent films. Now it is different. You can have a great idea but you must have the ability to convince investors that you are the only one who can make this great film and make a lot of money. If you don’t have this ability, you can’t make a film. And because I never learned to talk about myself as the best, I can’t imagine myself walking from one bank to the other, talking to powerful people saying, ‘Look, I have a great idea. Give me money and I will make a great film!’
How did the Academy Award for your film, Closely Watched Trains, affect your career?
Jiří Menzel: It didn’t at all, because Russian tanks rolled in a couple months after I received the Academy Award. After that, everything was different. Well, I got a raise at Barrandov Studios but after the Oscar I shot just one more film, not so good, and then came the period of diminution. It didn’t make any difference.
— (via Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews)