Ironically, last year’s celebrations and world-wide media attention surrounding the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with the publication of a book which quite unexpectedly throws light on an aspect of the history of the two German states that remains unresolved to this day: the heritage of National Socialism on both sides of the Wall, and in reunited Germany.

First things first: a kinoautomat is something like a movie vending-machine—you drop in your coins and out comes the movie you’ve selected. Accordingly, the Czechoslovakian film Kinoautomat: One Man and His House was one of the first interactive movies, one that allows the audience to decide for itself how the plot will evolve, to quite literally choose what movie they will watch.

Until recently, the history of Czech film theory and criticism has been a subject limited to specialists.  Original theoretical texts dealing with Czech cinema are not easily available and for the most part have gone untranslated. It is therefore not surprising that, until now, the historical importance and cultural value of Czech film theory and criticism was to a great extent unknown in an international context. The anthology Cinema All The Time, edited and annotated by Jaroslav Andel and Petr Szczepanik, has the potential to put an end to this poverty of international inquiry, presenting a selection of important and unjustifiably forgotten texts from the first half of 20th century.