Czech Dream

There was an interesting short film on the other day on one of the more obscure digital channels. Czech Dream (all in Czech with subtitles) about a wry look at how consumerism has taken over.

It recorded a large-scale hoax on the Czech public, culminating in the "opening event" of a fake "hypermarket" called Czech Dream and created a massive advertising campaign around it. Posing as businessmen, two film students managed to persuade an ad agency and PR agency to create a campaign for them. Billboards appeared on Czech highways, and 200,000 pamphlets were distributed in Prague. A jingle was recorded and there was a series of television commercials.

The shoppers came in their thousands. What looked like a huge building from a distance was actually only a canvas facade backed by scaffolding. When the "customers" finally realised that they had been deceived, they reacted in different ways. Some understood the filmmakers' message, some tried to take it optimistically ("At least we had some fresh air") but most were angry and many decided to blame the government…..