"Hollywood is desperate to find new, original voices, so everything can be done, but it takes entrepreneurial efforts. Czech producers could easily have made Mission: Impossible themselves, instead of just facilitating parts of the film," said experienced American producer Howard Rosenman, meeting Central European filmmakers at yesterday's panel in the Palác Kultury, organised by the Prague International Film Festival.

"I made my first film in 1976 - Sparkle, about three black girls in Harlem, from the first script US director Joel Schumacher ever wrote - and I tell you that it took a lot of hustling. But that is what is required in this business, and if you are not willing to do it, you might as well be selling shoes," added Rosenman, who - previously credited for such features as Father of the Bride and The Celluloid Closet - will shortly start Gilligan's Island, a spin-off from a 1960s popular television comedy series.

Rosenman shared the panel with, among others, fellow countrymen John Kilik (Dead Man Walking, Girl 6) and Dmitri Villard (Flight of the Navigator), who had each their - strongly contrasting - piece of good advice to the round table attendants.

"Czech directors should make national films, about a world they know well, and fell a passion for, and if they succeed, their work will travel. De Sica's Bicycle Thief was, if anything, Italian, but it became a huge inspiration to a generation of filmmakers, as well as an international success," said Kilik.

"If Czech producers want to expand into the international scene, they should develop scripts with an international appeal, shoot them in English, and cast a star or two. The story could take place in Prague, but it never harms to include an American in the plot," Villard concluded.

Jørn Rossing Jensen

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