Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2008 Preview

A number of distinguished guests attend the festival every year; in recent years, these have included actors Sean Connery, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, and Robert Redford, and directors Roman Polanski, Gus van Sant, Alexander Payne, and Walter Salles. On hand for the 43rd annual KVIFF will be legendary directors Nicolas Roeg, Les Blank, and Arturo Ripstein, all of whom will be greeted at the fest by retrospectives of their work. Also expected at the fest: internationally renowned actors Armin Mueller-Stahl and Christopher Lee, both of whom will be presented with the Festival President´s Award.

Tickets for films can be purchased individually at 65 CZK, or through a festival pass (highly recommended: 200 CZK daily, or 1000 CZK for the entire fest). Discounted rates for students, senior citizens, and the physically disabled are available. Warning: tickets need to be purchased the day of the screening, and most films will sell out. Festival pass holders without tickets are entitled to queue up outside screenings, and will be given available seats shortly before the film begins; though it seems risky, most visitors are able to see films this way. At the main cinema at Hotel Thermal (which seats 1145), hundreds of seats only become available minutes before the screening.

Documentaries make for some of the more interesting films at this year´s KVIFF, and among those playing in competition is my pick for the Fest: James Marsh´s Man on Wire, a look at the “artistic crime of the century”, when French tightrope walker Philippe Petit attempted to (illegally) walk across a steel wire suspended between NYC´s Twin Towers (then the highest buildings in the world) in 1974. The premise alone sold me; if you need more convincing, the film won both the World Cinema and Audience Documentary Awards at this year´s Sundance Fest, and Variety´s Robert Koehler calls it “one of the most wildly entertaining docs of recent years.”

A selection of films screened at Cannes in May fills KVIFF´s Open Eyes section. Included here are Lorna’s Silence, from acclaimed directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Son), Of Time and the City, from British helmer Terence Davies (The House of Mirth), Belgium director Christophe Van Rompaey´s Moscow, Belgium, Argentinean Pablo Trapero´s Lion’s Den, about a mother struggling to raise her child in prison, and my pick here, Matteo Garrone´s Gomorra, a look at modern-day Italian crime families.

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Included, in no particular order: Michel Gondry’s disappointing Be Kind Rewind, with Mos Def and Jack Black; Austin Chick’s August, starring Josh Hartnett; Jacques Rivette’s Don’t Touch the Axe, the latest from the director of Celine and Julie Go Boating; José Padilha’s Brazilian police story The Elite Squad; Andrea Molaioli’s The Girl by the Lake; John Sayles’ Honeydripper; Todd Haynes’ wildly overpraised Dylan vanity project I’m Not There; eclectic Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr’s The Man From London; Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor, starring Richard Jenkins; Helen Hunt´s Then She Found Me; Majid Majidi´s The Song of Sparrows, Justin Chadwick´s The Other Boleyn Girl, which opened to disappointing reviews in the US earlier this year; and Salvatore Mereu´s Sonetàula, which Variety´s Jay Weissberg calls a “seamless though challenging blend of Pasolini and Terrence Malick.”

Also screening is Martin Scorsese´s Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light, which garnered heaps of praise when it opened in the States two months ago. Manoel de Oliveira will turn 100 this December, and he’s still churning out films as prolifically as ever; Fest features his latest, Christopher Columbus: The Enigma. French director Emmanuel Mouret, often referred to as “Woody-Allen-meets-Eric-Rohmer”, is represented by the romantic comedy Shall We Kiss. Ari Folman, a member of this year’s grand jury, screens his highly praised Waltz with Bashir.

Arthouse films from around the globe are featured in the section Another View, which houses the largest collection of movies at KVIFF this year. Screening: Ballast, which won helmer Lance Hammer the Best Directing Award at Sundance; John Crowley´s Boy A; Omar Shargawi´s Denmark-set thriller Go With Peace Jamil; Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani´s Chop Shop; José Luis Guerín´s Strasbourg-set romance In the City of Sylvia; Tomas Alfredson´s vampire romance Let the Right One In; Julian Schnabel´s Lou Reed´s Berlin, a concert film following Reed performing over five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn; My Winnipeg, the latest from Canadian cult director Guy Maddin; Somers Town, the latest from UK director Shane Meadows (This is England).

The tribute to eclectic UK director Nicolas Roeg features some of his best work – Performance (1971, co-directed by Donald Cammell), Walkabout (1974), and Bad Timing (1980) – along with his latest feature and first in 15 years: Puffball, starring Donald Sutherland and Miranda Richardson. Bad Timing is the gem here; originally X-rated and notoriously unavailable on home video until a recent Criterion DVD release, its story of an American expatriate in Vienna, estranged from her Czech husband, holds particular time-capsule relevance for the Czech Republic.

A new section features a number of Hollywood-revolutionizing classics from the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls generation. Included here are Paul Mazursky´s Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969), William Friedkin´s The French Connection (1971), Hal Ashby´s The Last Detail (1973), Robert Altman´s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Martin Scorsese´s New York, New York (1977), Arthur Penn´s Night Moves (1975), and Noel Black´s Pretty Poison (1968). Each is a masterpiece, with the possible exception of Scorsese´s film.

A wide-ranging selection of UK chillers permeate the midnight screenings at this years´ fest; these include quintessential anthology film Dead of Night (1945), classic ghost story The Innocents (1961), Michael Powell´s career-killer Peeping Tom (1960) and Michael Reeves´ final film Witchfinder General; all of these are out-and-out classics. Also screening: Hammer´s Dracula (1958) and obscure horror vehicles The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936, starring Boris Karloff) and The Dark Eyes of London (1939, starring Bela Lugosi).

The Grand Jury at the 2008 KVIFF will be headed by Czech writer and director Ivan Passer, who co-wrote Miloš Forman´s early films before emigrating to the US to direct some widely unknown gems, including Born to Win (1971, starring George Segal) and Cutter´s Way (1985, starring Jeff Bridges); the festival will also feature a tribute to Passer. Also sitting on the jury: British actress Brenda Blethyn (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice); Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir); US producer Ted Hope (21 Grams, In the Bedroom); Czech musician Jan P. Muchow (of Ecstasy of St. Theresa fame); Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege (The Vanishing, Vincent and Theo); and legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).