The Zlin Film Festival, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary from May 30 to June 6, is a chance to not only discover cinema from the past and the present, but also an introduction to the city's unique status as a UNESCO Heritage Site. For those who know their modernist architectural history, Zlin is indeed a utopia of modernity.

Situated in the Moravian district in the eastern corner of what is now the Czech Republic, Zlin was a planned city that espoused modernist ideals of architecture and art in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Built in the 1920s and 1930s, its planners drew their inspiration from Le Corbusier’s “functional city”, Howard’s "garden city" and Garnier’s “cité industrielle”. Its urban-utopian aspiration made it into a unique example of urban planning in the history of European industry – inseparably connected to the Zlín firm of Bat´a, one of the first shoe manufacturers to operate globally.

The success story of the company’s founder Tomáš Bat’a and Zlín’s architectural history are inseperably intertwined. The project to create an ideal city for workers and management was part of a lofty dream of utopia that drew upon both scientific and aesthetic criteria to better the lifestyles and living conditions of the working classes.

A symposium held in Zlín and Prague in May 2009  analyzed the interrelationships between economic and social, biographical and architectural factors in this utopian urban planning project. Both the symposium and exhibition thus also represented an important contribution to the current European discussion on urbanity.

A trip to Zlín is a trip to an actually built utopia (most never made it from the drawing board to actuality). The airy and well lit factories, the generous green spaces, and the free-standing apartment blocks were once the scene of a bold social experiment: to create ideal working and living conditions for workers who had toiled under the most unclean and unsafe conditions during the Industrial Revolution and its 20th century aftermath.

The experiment was meant to solve the problems plaguing larger cities: the oppressive density of overpopulated tenements, unclean sanitary conditions and oppressive air pollution and the lack of green space. In addition, the project encouraged a balancing between work and leisure, all done in the same geographical area.

Zlín is a unique and exemplary chapter of Modernity in action. Astonishingly, it is nonetheless little known outside of the Czech Republic. One of the benefits of the international exposure afforded the Zlin Film Festival, particularly in this 50th anniversary year, is bring attention to this important project in the history of world architecture and integrated social living.

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor