Prologue

In film, the term “prologue” nowadays denotes almost everything that appears before the opening credits. The meaning of this word is not fixed. This thesis does not define the “prologue” phenomenon and does not wish to describe it in the historical context of art spheres. It deals with the opening scenes at the beginning of a film before the onset of the actual composition of the main story and addresses their functions in the entire dramaturgic structure of the work. To facilitate the apprehension and description of “prologue”, the thesis attempts to generalise the term and classify it into several groups according to defined criteria. It does not set itself the objective of forming a definition but of analysing the dramaturgic structure of a conventionally understood term “prologue” and initiating a discussion on all fronts of the film-making profession about this tool that can do more than just touching up the first few minutes of a film