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The study deals with the relations between literature and film industry from the 1910s to 1945. It draws attention to the publication of screenwriting manuals in the 1910s and 1920s aimed at the lay user with no literary experience. It then pays great attention to the organisation of theme competitions and other similar events, organised in the early 1920s first by production companies, but in later years exclusively by industry associations of film producers. During the period of German occupation under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech-Moravian Film Headquarters organised these competitions as an umbrella organisation of the self-government with a privileged position. The theme competitions were characterised by a very high participation of authors (1,040 themes in the 1941-1942 competition), and in each of them, among the prize-winning works, there were themes that were made into films. Through these competitons, the film producers tried to attract established writers to collaborate with the film, to raise the level of screenwriting and thus to stabilize the literary background of the domestic film industry. The study is linked to an edition of archival documents that provide insight into the operation of the dramaturgy department of Lucernafilm, one of the two most important film companies of the Protectorate period, and a closer look at the 1944 action of Czech writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]