The Prague Post
October 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Real Estate Prague Prague Rentals Prague Apartments Prague Art & Antiques

Home » Archives » News

Film festival closes with charm

Karlovy Vary winners indicate good news ahead for film industry

July 16th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The Crystal Globe for this year's Best Film, awarded July 12, went to Denmark's Henrik Ruben Genz, for his film Terribly Happy.
COURTESY PHOTO
The homegrown talent Jiří Mádl took home the honors for Best Actor.
And the winners are...



Best Film: Terribly Happy (Henrik Ruben Genz, Denmark)
Special Jury Prize: The Photograph (Nan T. Achnas; Indonesia, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden)
Best Director: Alexey Uchitel (Captive, Russia, Bulgaria)
Best Actress: Martha Issová (Night Owls, Czech Republic)
Best Actor: Jiří Mádl (Night Owls, Czech Republic)
Special Mentions: The Karamazovs (Petr Zelenka; Czech Republic, Poland), The Investigator (Attila Gigor; Hungary, Sweden, Ireland)
Best Documentary under 30 Minutes: Lost World (Gyula Nemes; Hungary, Finland)
Best Documentary over 30 Minutes: Man on Wire (James Marsh, United Kingdom)
Documentary Special Mention: Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (Christopher Bell, USA)
Best Film - East of the West Section: Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy; Kazakhstan, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Poland)
Special Mention - East of the West Section: Seamstresses (Lyudmil Todorov, Bulgaria)
Audience Prize: 12 (Nikita Michalkov, Russia)
By Will Tizard
For the Post   
If here’s any place to catch the rise of filmmaking in Central and Eastern Europe, it’s Karlovy Vary. The July 12 awards ceremony was telling. As the lights came up before a crowd of international filmmakers and industry folk in tuxedoes and gowns, they found themselves confronted with an over-the-top tribute to Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind, complete with a no-budget film created live onstage with action figures and home video cameras. Laughter rippled through the audience, cutting the nervous tension as people awaited the announcements of the Crystal Globe winners that would close the film festival.
The same homegrown act, with a slightly different ending, greeted an audience in which Robert De Niro sat a week earlier for the July 4 festival opening, conveying the organic charm that Karlovy Vary is known for. It’s hard to imagine any other festival that could get away with such a welcoming for an Oscar-winning heavyweight.
The Berlin film festival is still the place to spot stars and those about to become them, while Cannes is where major studios still showcase their arthouse films and make major deals. Karlovy Vary, as guest actor Christopher Lee put it, is about “the heart, the mind, the soul.”
It’s also about backpackers and celebrating independent film from around the world. Films from the former Eastern bloc, both narrative and documentary, were referenced with visual jokes during the awards ceremony film. (The mini-feature portrayed Russian speaking mobsters staging a heist of the Crystal Globe prizes, driving past a campground full of bikini-clad film fans. It also parodied the pending U.S. radar base, suggesting that it’s just a cover for a secret Russian rocket launch pad.)
Lest anyone doubt the film talent from Central and Eastern Europe in the 14-film Crystal Globe competition for feature, juries awarded four top prizes to regional films.
Sure, the main film prize went to the Danish police thriller Terribly Happy, and a special jury prize went to The Photograph, an Indonesian-French-Dutch-Swiss-Swedish co-production. But the best director, actor, actress and special mention awards went to a Russian film, a Czech film and one with a Hungarian director.
The acting honors, for Martha Issová and Jiří Mádl, who portray mixed-up Karlín district youths in Michaela Pavlátová’s Night Owls, written by Czech journalist Irena Hejdová, are likely to establish two hot talents that will be seen in several films to come.
Coming soon
While some Karlovy Vary jury members said the competition films, particularly documentaries, were of uneven quality this year, it seems there will be more for festival programmers to choose from than ever in the coming year, at least in the Czech Republic.
Pavel Strnad, a member of the Audiovisual Producers’ Association (APA), which lobbies for streamlining the film-funding system and offering foreign films incentives to shoot in the Czech Republic, produced Night Owls through his own company, Negativ.
Good news is on the horizon for more such indie films, he says.
The Czech Cinematography Fund, a prime financing engine for local films, is currently at a healthy level, with some $18.3 million available, fueling a production boom, with 30 features currently shooting or in the planning stages. What’s more, the Czech film funding rules, written in 1992, are up for review with an eye toward ensuring a stable financial source, Strnad says, with a new film fund bill expected to go before Parliament in September, following Culture Ministry analysis.  
Though this amount is barely enough to fund one “indie” film in Hollywood, budget-savvy Czech producers are usually happy to have $1 million to work with — and often achieve similar production values to their Western competition. Upcoming films have generated buzz for months, says Jana Černíková of the Czech Film Center. She cited, for example, Goat Story, a 3-D animation comedy, and Alois Nebel, a graphic novel adaptation that uses rotoscope technology to animate live performances.
Newly released figures from the APA also show that Czechs have been supporting local film with their wallets. In the past year, 15 percent of the films in theaters were Czech — and they won 40 percent of national ticket sales revenue. Seven of the top 10 current grossers are Czech films as well.
The country releases about 200 films each year, and audiences overall are in decline, but Strnad is careful to keep it in perspective. “If people aren’t going to films, it isn’t because they are bad,” he says. “It’s because they are doing something else. There is a decline, but it applies to American films too. You can’t blame Czech films.”
Will Tizard can be reached at news@praguepost.com


Other articles in News (16/07/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.