One of the sidebars for this, the first Prague International Film Festival, is a selection of «Off-Hollywood» low-budget independent features, mostly debuts, all of which were made «for the love of cinema, not money,» for budgets under US$1m.
«It is my hope that the Czech audience and especially Czech filmakers and producers will find inspiration in these films to revitalize their own national film production industry,» says programmer Stephanie Beroes.
The films on offer have been acclaimed at festivals such as Berlin, Cannes and Sundance, and include simple stories like Michael Corrente's Federal Hill and John Rubino's Lotto Land, artistically told dramas like Deirdre Fishel's Risk , James Mangold's Heavy or Rebecca Miller's Angela, and compelling documentary portraits like Hoop Dreams and Terry Zwigoff's Crumb.
All of these films are Czech premieres, and some are European premieres. Screenings will be held at Vinohradska Trida 40 (Metro stop Namesti Miru) as well as the Palac Kultury.
Retrospectives
For this new festival Nikita Mikhalkov, the preeminent figure in contemporary Russian cinema, and Arthur Hiller, the much respected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will come together in Prague, the cultural frontier of the new Europe, to celebrate their work and the breaking down of old borders.
Mikhalkov's international profile was raised earlier this year following his Oscar for Burnt by The Sun, tonight's opening film. But his reputation in Russia and on the festival circuit was firmly established by a series of film successes through the 1970s and 1980s, several of which will be playing during the festival.
Arthur Hiller has been a successful Hollywood director for over thirty years, managing to combine critical acclaim with box office success. As well as being a perfect representative of the American filmmaking community, he is a filmmaker whose work is well worthy of a retrospective.
Jewels of World Cinema
To celebrate the centenary of cinema, the festival will be screening a series of classic films from around the world, «just to remind ourselves where we're coming from, and to give us a historical perspective,» as the festival's John Riley explains.
This year the Jewels include three US films: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey; Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces; and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. European cinema is represnted by Luis Berlanga's El Verdugo, Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du soir, Ingmar Bergman's Persona, Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible Part II, and two Czech classics: Jiri Trnka's animated classic Stare Povesti Ceske and Karel Zeman's Vynalez Zkazy.
War and Peace
This section of the festival commemorates the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, with a selection of films specifically about, or set during, the war. The films come from those countries which took a key role in the conflict, and interpret some aspect of that country's experience of the war.
As befits Prague's geographical position, the selection is biased towards films from Central and Eastern Europe, such as Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, Andrej Wajda's Kanal, Alfred Radok's The Long Journey, Raduga, about wartime Ukraine, and the fascinating Czech-German documentary Shiva and the Gallows. Other films include the Meryl Streep starrer Sophie's Choice, The Long Day's Dying from the UK, Bertolucci's The Conformist from Italy, and Visconti's The Damned.
Czech Cinema
One of the main aims of the new Prague International Film Festival, as well as stimulating Czech film culture generally, is to raise the Czechs' profile internationally. To help this Milos Fedas has programmed a selection of recent Czech films for the festival.
Though they are as yet little known outside their own country, films like I Thank You for Each New Morning (winner of four Czech Lion awards) and the sci-fi comedy Akumulator 1 have been major successes at the local box office. Other films screening include Big Beat, a rock musical set in the dark days of the 1950s, The Fortress, a Kafka-esque drama from formerly prohibited filmmaker Drahomira Vihanova, and, representing the best of modern Czech animation, Repete, winner of a Golden Bear at Berlin.
FILM FESTIVAL 1995
SIDEBARS
