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And the Crystal Globe goes to ...

Karlovy Vary awards films addressing serious subject matters

By Will Tizard
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 11th, 2007 issue

Photos by Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary
Danny DeVito, who was honored for his contribution to world cinema, gets chummy with Václav Havel's crowd.
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Photos by Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary
Lilja Pálmadóttir and Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City won Best Film.
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KVIFF winners

Main competition
Film
Jar City, Baltasar Kormákur, Iceland/Germany
Director
Bard Breien, The Art of Negative Thinking, Norway
Actor
Sergey Puskepalis, Simple Things, Russia
Actress
Elvira Mínguez, Pudor, Spain
Special mention
Film, Lucky Miles, Michael James Rowland, Australia
Actor, Leonid Bronevoy, Simple Things, Russia
Screenwriter, Zdeněk Svěrák, Empties, Czech Republic
Audience award
Empties, Jan Svěrák, Czech Republic
Documentaries
Over 30 minutes
Lost Holiday, Lucie Králová, Czech Republic
Under 30 minutes
Artel, Sergey Loznitsa, Russia
Special mention
Theodore, Laila Pakalnina, Latvia
The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories, Andrey Paounov, Bulgaria
East of the West section
Armin, Ognjen Svilicic, Croatia/Germany/Bosnia and Herzegovina
Special mention
The Class, Ilmar Raag, Estonia

A prize-winning Norwegian director made an odd observation on the closing night of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival July 7 that was clearly intended as a joke.
In praising the nine-day international festival, he said it’s wonderful that there’s still a place where a dark, grim Scandinavian film can win praises.

”You’re just as depressed as we are,” Bard Breien told the audience approvingly.

But Breien, who won Best Director for The Art of Negative Thinking, an offbeat comedy about a paraplegic who plots against a group of disabled people trying to cheer him up, may just have been onto something.
Despite uninviting wet weather, record numbers crowded the west Bohemian spa town, causing sold-out shows and frustration among hundreds of visitors — and they did so to see films generally a lot darker than Breien’s.
Clearly, Karlovy Vary audiences don’t see such films as depressing, however. For these film fans, normally deprived of low-budget independent world cinema, the chance to catch the latest wave from Korea, Argentina or Iran is just too good to pass up each year.
Thus, the 42nd Karlovy Vary film fest, for those who were able to score tickets, was more than a glitzy annual tradition and a chance to glimpse Renee Zellweger, Danny DeVito, Cybill Shepherd, Bud Cort and Jake Paltrow. For most visitors, it was more about seeing films like Jar City, the sci-fi/horror Crystal Globe winner by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, or Russian director Alexey Popogrebsky’s brooding comedy drama Simple Things, which scored a Best Actor award for Sergey Puskepalis and Special Jury Mention for the performance of Leonid Bronevoy.
Main competition films aside, the festival’s documentary category, won this year by Czech filmmaker Lucie Králová’s engaging travel detective story Lost Holiday, generated as many long lines and discussions in the bars of the Hotel Thermal, the festival’s home base.
So did the East of the West competition, which honors the best in film-making from the former Eastern bloc with a Crystal Globe.
That prize went to the German/Balkan story of showbiz and protégés Armin, reflecting a new wave of talent, as recognized by East of the West juror Stefan Laudyn.
The festival’s role in showcasing rising stars from the East grows every year, and film industry reps from the West gathered for presentations of fresh new work such as Testimony, a Romanian documentary on how fatal illness can fire the work of artists by a director with terminal cancer himself, Razvan Georgescu.
Many others, including reviewers and festival scouts, were eager to catch up on Czech feature films, such as Jan Hřebejk’s new, Oscar-nominated comedy, tentatively titled Good by Me.
The Forum of Independents section, as usual, proved one of the most popular sections with audiences, who jostled for tickets to Matthias Luthard’s debut, a portrait of German family politics Pingpong, which scored the independent camera award from Czech TV.
The audience prize, awarded via direct votes from festival-goers, went to Oscar winner Jan Svěrák’s new comedy, Empties, while the main jury, chaired by Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, cited the picture’s screenwriter and Svěrák’s father, Zdeněk Svěrák, with a special mention.
The aging concrete Hotel Thermal is a classic of communist bombast in an otherwise gorgeous town full of colonnades and wedding-cake rowhouses. It hosts several bars and cafés, all with oppressive décor. For one week in late June or early July each year, it’s filled with local film fanatics and international creatives, producers, buyers and scouts from other festivals, all heatedly exchanging tips.
The setting, ugly as it is, has become half the appeal at the A-category film fest (meaning it competes with Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno and San Sebastian for competition films) with a difference. Jake Paltrow, director of the American entry this year, the comedy romance The Good Night, starringMartin Freeman, DeVito, Gwyneth Paltrow and Penelope Cruz, said he was impressed by the lack of visible film industry presence at Karlovy Vary.
“It’s about the pictures,” he said.
Crowds of backpackers clamoring to get into cinemas are a feature you don’t see at other A-list festivals, he said.
Nevertheless, glamour was around as the week wound down Saturday with Danny DeVito bringing down the house, recounting how Miloš Forman tricked him into uttering a choice Czech obscenity during the shooting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which launched his career in 1975.
DeVito picked up a Crystal Globe for contribution to world cinema at the last festival ceremony before participants retired to the traditional gala party at the Grand Hotel Pupp, an opulent old hostelry that usually houses all the star visitors.
Audiences of more than 12,000 turned out for the nine-day fest — a jump of more than 1,000 from last year — catching 250 films.

Will Tizard can be reached at wtizard@praguepost.com


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