Like its neighbour to the north, Czechoslovakia was a Soviet satellite state. In Czechoslovakia, as in Poland, the cost of importing film posters from abroad was high. Local artists were commissioned to create the posters instead. They often worked without seeing the films first, basing their work on press clippings and the title. The interpretations often had nothing to do with the movie.
Like Polish poster artists, there was little censorship with film posters. But in the years following the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the task of designing posters for foreign films became increasingly problematic. Zdeněk Ziegler was interrogated by the secret police for creating a poster for the film 100 Rifles (1969). Artists like Karel Teissig, Bedřich Dlouhý and Jiří Balcar became experts at creating sharp, biting, and often surreal posters with visual metaphors.
