As noted above, and in marked contrast to the position in the Czech Republic, Slovakia entered the republic with no enterprises or organisations geared to film production or distribution. This disproportion between the two parts of the Czechoslovak Republic would continue throughout its entire existence until 1939.
In 1919 organisations operating in the field of film production and distribution in the Czech Republic and Moravia came together to establish the Syndicate of Czechoslovak Production and Distribution, and later in the same year a Slovak branch office of the syndicate was opened in Bratislava. The activities of this syndicate were focused on the distribution of films. Later, other film distribution companies were formed in Slovakia. Several of them were branch offices of Czech companies which involved the participation of Czech capital.
As time went on the fragmented film distribution infrastructure became more concentrated. By the 1930s Josef Čeřovský’s Elitefilm, originally established as the Bratislava representative office of Interfilm Prague film distributors, had become one of the largest film distribution companies in the Czech Republic. In 1938 Elitefilm launched its own news journal entitled Elite-žurnál, the first sound film journal in the Slovak language. However, its activities were discontinued due to the state centralisation of the film production and industry in Slovakia after the split of the first Czechoslovak Republic.