Last summer, Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, two Czech film students, persuaded advertising and public-relations agencies, graphic designers, printers, jingle-writers, even crowd-psychologists from the Czech army to help them devise a marketing campaign announcing the biggest and cheapest hypermarket ever seen in Prague.

Over a thousand would-be shoppers turned up for the opening—only to find that the campaign was a hoax, and the store a fake.

The story fed debates about whether the Czechs’ post-communist fascination with consumerism was undermining society, and whether other publicity campaigns—notably the one under way at the time in favour of European Union membership—could be misleading too.

The authors of the spoof made a documentary film to show how it was put together. “The Czech Dream” film is now screened in Prague.

Amazingly, the film shows that Czech sense of tolerance and humour prevails, as many people were ready to put the blame on themselves for being taken in by it.

From The Economist, via Archinect.