Reporter's Notebook: Down and out at KVIFF

Karlovy Vary,

West Bohemia

If last week's Prague Post preview told of red-carpet razzle-dazzle in a picture-perfect spa town, there's also another, decidedly gritty side to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Away from John Malkovich's fashion parades, away from tourists chomping the ubiquitous spa cakes and guzzling the frankly grim-tasting mineral waters, there are some tenacious film fans who'll go to great lengths to feast their peepers on a premiere.

Take for instance the old school building around the corner from the festival's hub, in which hundreds of voracious filmgoers are to be found sleeping on the hard linoleum flooring, 20 to a room. With many spilling out into the corridors, it looks like the wake of a national disaster. That there is one solitary shower serving God knows how many bodies insinuates many probably haven't bothered washing.

Meanwhile, to catch movies like Wim Wenders' Pina, Francesca from Italy and Eva from Prague braved the grizzly weather in a tent for three nights. This place is less Cannes, more Glastonbury.

Karlovy Vary has everyman prices, too. Peter, a heating engineer from London, and wife Wu Ling arrived two days early with plans to stay the duration.

"We've been here before. We think it's a great festival," Peter said. "I've been to the London Film Festival, but really it's too expensive for me. Here, for 35 pounds, you can buy a full pass. You can only see about three films in London for that price."

From this makeup of people willing to slum it derives a joyous atmosphere at the screenings themselves. For the international premiere of Ni a vendre ni a louer (Holidays by the Sea), the film's director Pascal Rabaté has to get to his seat by circumnavigating numerous fans sprawled in the outer aisles. Just like at the school-cum-dormitory, people and enthusiasm are overflowing.

There is also a wonderful tradition that has emerged at the festival's main screening hall in the Thermal Hotel. Every time a film is introduced by director, actor, producer or whoever else, a small bearded man takes to the stage and, with all the decorum of a ringmaster or Tibetan monk, disassembles the microphone stand and lays it flat on its side. With this, the bewhiskered one performs a humble bow, to rapturous applause from more than a thousand pairs of hands. Dame Judi Dench would have done well to have gotten half that recognition when accepting her Crystal Globe on the night of July 1.

And just as filmgoers are want to show their appreciation, they are not prudent in exhibiting their dissatisfaction, either. The digitally restored version of the 1967 medieval epic (and epically long) Marketa Lazarová caused more than a couple of upturned seats and swinging exit doors.

This was nothing compared with the mass exodus at the screening of British documentary The Nine Muses. At first, the audience trickled out from this languorous piece of pretentiousness. Soon, they were gushing out like one of Karlovy Vary's pressurized springs.

How many were left come the end?

Hard to say: The Prague Post didn't quite make it all the way to credits, either. You've got to get into the spirit of the festival, after all.

Even if that means exiting an auditorium.

Will Noble can be reached at
wnoble@praguepost.com