Festival Fantazie

Registration
Fees for the festival range from 240 CZK for a day pass to 1860 CZK for the entire ten days. It is also possible to pay for half a day or a combination of days with a half-day. The organizers request that people pay by bank transfer. They also recommend that you bring your bank statement and confirmation email to ensure you’ve been registered. All information on ticket prices and payment can be found here. At the moment, there is no English on-line registration form, only the Czech one. It is also possible to register and pay at the reception in Chotěboř.

Venue and Transportation
The small town of Chotěboř, located in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, might not be the first place you would expect to find a sci-fi and fantasy festival. However, one advantage of the location is that the size of the town allows for all the events to be in close proximity. Plus the historical location lends the festival an atmosphere you wouldn’t find in a big city.

The most convenient way to get to Chotěboř would be to travel to either Pardubice or Havlíčkův Brod by train and travel from either of these places to the the festival city. The connections are fairly frequent between 10:00am and 2:00pm. There are also some less frequent direct bus routes from Florenc bus station. For those intending to go for the whole festival, there is a festival bus leaving from Černý Most bus station twice on the first day and returning to Prague twice on the last day.

As for where to stay when you get there, the organizers recommend a number of options from guesthouses to pitching a tent in the Chotěboř Arena.

Guests
No festival is complete without guests. The full guest list promises to expose you to a range of people involved in bringing your imagination to the page and screen. The international guests this year are John Ottman and Michael Brunsfeld. Ottman is a film editor and composer. Fans of the director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects and Superman Returns) will be familiar with his work. For those who aren’t, you can listen to a sample here. Brunsfeld is an illustrator and designer who worked as the Visal Effects Art Director and Designer for Industrial Light and Magic for eight and a half years. (This company was set up by George Lucas and was responsible for the special effects in the Star Wars series among others.) Brunsfeld also worked on Minority Report and the Mummy series.

Films
During FF, up to 5 films will be screened in the cinema daily. Movies include fairly recent releases such as X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Thor, Transformers 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides along with what may be the only chance in the Czech Republic to see Iceland´s “first thriller” Rejkyavik Whale Watching Massacre. For a full list of films and for information on times and venues check this page.

Games
FF caters for both the electronic and non-electronic gamer. Electronic and computer game sessions will take place in Sokolovna, and the sports hall (sportovní hala) is for table top and card games. The computer game zone will have 35 consoles (Playstation, Xbox and Wii) and 30 PCs. The main event for computer game lovers is that Uncharted 3: Drake´s Deception will be presented. This is a couple of months before its official release in November.

Apart from the shoot-em up and adventure games, there will be computer RPGs such as Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and Dragon Age II.

Wait, There’s More…
You would think with such a full program this would be enough, but the organizers have also put together a social program that includes bands, theater, karaoke and an exhibition of art on the theme of dragons.

Have you been to FF? What did you think? Do you plan to go this year?