Prague NGOs strive to help integrate foreigners

“Your car is German. Your vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebab is Turkish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your numbers Arabic, your letters Latin. And you complain that your neighbor is an immigrant? Pull yourself together. Copy if you’re against racism,” says a quote that took up Facebook statuses everywhere a while ago. But to what extent do Czechs really get this?

When looking at the real numbers, there are over 400,000 foreigners registered in the Czech Republic, according to the latest records of the Foreigners Police. Another study showed that one out of eight people living in Prague is a foreigner. However, according to a different study conducted by the STEM agency two years ago, two out of three Czechs think foreigners represent a security threat and 80 percent consider the number of foreigners working in the country too high. With blogs, demonstrations, media training, Czech language courses and more, NGOs and volunteers try to change Czechs’ perceptions of foreigners by telling stories of their lives and cultures.

“Information is the basis for tolerance,” says Masha Volynsky, one of the coordinators of the Migration Awareness Program and a member of Fórum migrantů (Migrant’s Forum), a nonprofit Prague initiative trying to help migrants’ integration into the Czech society and provide information about their life.

Migrant’s Forum was originally founded as an informal discussion group by the Migration Awareness Program of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) People in Need (Člověk v tísni).

The Migration Awareness Program’s coordinators also send newsletters to all the country’s major media including TV and radio stations, dailies and magazines informing them about news pertaining to migration in the country. The coordinators also organize training for migrants to help them communicate with media more effectively, and most importantly, manage the Migrant’s Forum blog, which covers the migrant’s viewpoints, problems and experience in the Czech Republic — both good and bad.

The responses to the blogposts vary, Volynsky says , but it serves the main purpose — to inform the readers of the foreigners’ stories and spark discussion.

The forum also plans to organize more free-time events where different cultures can be presented. The first one took place about a month ago, and its participants were shown how to make Vietnamese spring rolls from scratch. “It’s not as easy as it seems,” Volynsky said with a laugh, pointing out the importance of showing the public migrants lead ordinary everyday lives. “It’s more difficult to hate an individual you know closely than an entire group you know nothing about.”

Another way to inform public is with documentary films. While Martin Ryšavý’s biting documentary “The Land of Dreams” (Země snů) about Vietnamese immigrants lured to the Czech Republic by visions of fortune only to end up empty-handed won the Pavel Koutecký award last year at the One World Film Festival, Volynsky invites people to see a new document by Vít Janeček to be screened at the One World festival this year, “Great Opportunity” (Skvělá příležitost), a mozaic about the life of Mongolian minority living in the Czech Republic.

Learning the language

There are several NGOs trying to achieve the same goal as Migrant’s Forum: to inform public about problems foreigners face here and help them to better integrate in the society.

One such civic association is the Center for the Integration of Foreigners (CIC). Founded in 2003 by Lucie Ditrychová, CIC has since developed three major areas of focus: open Czech language courses, social and employment counseling and a volunteer program.

The aim of the Czech language courses is not only just to teach basic language skills but also to help people fill out an application form or be able to respond to questions at a job interview. Czechs also have the opportunity to volunteer to be a “buddy” to a person and take him or her to cultural events or help with the language under the supervision of CIC.

“Working with people directly one-on-one still remains the most important part of our daily work,” Ditrychová says, pointing out the center’s other successes, such as participating on the new Czech compulsory exam for foreigners seeking a permanent residence in the Czech Republic or helping people to deal with state administration offices.

However, the most interesting effort by CIC is the estaablishment of the Osina award for the worst act in integration of foreigners. Osina means “awn grass” in English, the name being derived from the Czech saying “osina v zadku” or “pain in the butt.”

Praise and shame

“We were mostly just upset with some of the actions and rhetoric of the officials and talked about it all the time among us, so we thought why not to make it public,” Ditrychová says. After the first Osina awards were announced in 2008, when the Interior Ministry and Labor and Social Affairs Ministry won for “extremelly effective prevention of foreigners’ integration,” the State Administration suggested they not only focus on the bad actions but also recognized the good efforts being done. A year later, the first Naděžda (derived from the Russian meaning of the name “hope”) award was given to the Ministry of Education for supporting equal opportunities in education.

This year, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs won again for failing to extend visas to foreign workers with jobs requiring low or no qualification in hopes to boost employment of Czechs. Former Social Democrat (ČSSD) leader Jiří Paroubek took the Osina award for the worst quote: “It is not suitable to employ people from other cultures, they stay here. They learn the language, have kids and we have an ethnicity problem on our hands.”

On the other hand, civic association META won the Naděžda award for setting up the website Inkluzivniskola.cz, where teachers can find help for better integration of children to Czech schools, information that is not provided by the Education Ministry.

Anyone could take part at the nominations or vote, and Ditrychová and other CIC members encouraged everyone to do so at the awards ceremony that took place Feb. 17 at the Bio Oko café.

Instead of awards or trying to spread information online, the Initiative for Migrants’ Rights chose a different way to bring attention to problems that foreigners face. Since October, its members started distributing hot tea and coffee to people lining up in front of the Foreigners Police offices at Koněvova street and Chodov,which finally brought attention of public broadcaster Czech Television (ČT), which sent cameras to document the event on the spot one freezing morning.

In June last year, while the temperature reached opposite extremes during the summer, the initiative’s supporters took to Prague streets with posters and slogans calling for better treatment of foreign workers in the Czech Republic, especially those working at low-paying jobs they lost or would lose due to the government’s new idea for solving unemployment.

There are numerous other associations and groups trying to help foreigners and inform the public. Volynsky and Ditrychová both agree that unless the media becomes more interested in these efforts and changes some of the negative messages it sends to the public about foreigners, their job remains difficult.

Plzeň’s Finále showcases Czech screen gems

The Finále festival showcases the best of Czech cinema, past and present, and is one of the annual cultural highlights in Plzeň, the western Bohemian city associated more closely with Pilsner beer than movies of any kind. While the name of the festival, founded in 1968 by the state administration, seems to indicate a culmination, it is actually an acronym of sorts, derived from “FIlmy NAšich LEt” meaning “films of our age.”

The festival has always had a main competition; in 2002, organizers added a retrospective focusing on the “golden age” of Czech cinema — the 1960s — but abandoned it in 2009, replacing it with the Phenomenon of Times section (more on that later). This year, Finále’s main event is the competition of feature films, which includes works premiering between April 2010 and April 2011 with at least 20 percent of production costs coming from Czech-based companies. The winner receives the Golden Kingfisher (Zlatý ledňáček).

Among the 10 films contending this year is Jan Hřebejk’s “Innocence” (Nevinnost), a psychological drama about a doctor who is accused of sexually abusing a minor; Jan Švankmajer’s “Surviving Life” (Přežít svůj život), a psychoanalytical comedy combining animation and acting; and Petr Jákl’s “Kajínek,” a true crime story.

Several new films will also be shown out of competition. “Leaving” (Odcházení) by ex-president turned director Václav Havel looks at a politician leaving office. Tomáš Řehořek’s “One Way Ticket” (Piko) blends fictionalized scenes with archival material and first-hand testimony about the methamphetamine-like drug pervitin in the ’80s and ’90s.

Documentaries in competition include Martin Ryšavý’s poetic “Bear Islands” (Medvědí ostrovy), shot during his expedition to Siberia; Helena Třeštíková’s award-winning “Katka,” which follows 14 years of a heroin addict’s life; and Ivan Vojnár’s “Cinematherapy,” which lets several characters who answered a casting call talk about their lives on camera.

All in the family

A new section this year is family film sagas, starting with the Procházka family “This year’s choice was inspired by the memory of [dissident screenwriter] Jan Procházka, who died exactly 40 years ago due to oppression from the communist regime. [It was] an enormous loss for Czech film,” said Jan Lukeš, a program board member.

Jan’s daughter Lenka Procházková, a Czech writer and signer of Charter 77, wrote the screenplay to a TV film in this section “About Hungry Hag” (O bábě hladové), and his granddaughter Maria Procházková, an award-winning director will see her film “Shark in the Head” (Žralok v hlavě) also screened in this section. “Mahulena Procházková, his wife, and Iva Procházková, another daughter of his and also a writer, will also be present,” Lukeš said. “In the Heat of the Power” (V žáru moci – Jan Procházka), a documentary about the man and his journey, is also not to be missed.

Other sections will pay tribute to another “film family” known by an abbreviation of their last names: MICHR. Cinematographer Stanislav Milota and actress Vlasta Chramostová are celebrating 40 years of marriage, but they have been together almost for 50. Together they worked on one film only: the cult horror “The Cremator” (Spalovač mrtvol) by Juraj Herz, but the section screens other major films such as one of their so-called apartment plays “Play Macbeth,” an anti-communist film that was shot over five days and smuggled unedited out of the country, a finished version aired in Austria in 1978, but it was first shown on Czechoslovak Television in 1991.

“When they were both excluded from Czech film, they made a living for example by selling lamps that they made from waste glass, which led to a saying “S firmou MICHR, licht ist sicher” (With the MICHR company, light is a sure thing),” Lukeš said. A book with the same title will be presented for the first time at the festival, followed by a discussion forum with the couple.

There are three other sections paying tribute to icons of Czech film. One is dedicated to Iva Janžurová, an actress that starred in over 60 films and numerous plays since she begun her active carrier in mid-60s.

The Wonderful Movie Cranks section will, as usual, screen works by filmmakers who are celebrating, or would have celebrated, a significant birthday this year. Otakar Vávra’s “Romance for Bugle” (Romance pro křídlovku) is based on a Romeo and Juliet-themed lyrical poem. Vávra was born in 1911. Gustav Machatý’s “Ecstasy” (Extáze) sparked a lot of controversy due to its nude scene with a young Hedy Lamarr. Machatý was born in 1901.

This year, the Phenomenon of Times section (introduced in 2010, when it focused on underground film) looks at the traditional Czech music festival of folk and country music, Porta. Founded in 1967, the annual festival had over 30,000 visitors at its prime and was sometimes called the Czech Woodstock.

The traditional open-air screenings will take place at U Branky in the city center and will show films of perhaps the most famous film duo, Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak. Smoljak passed away in June last year.

The festival opened April 17 with the pre-premiere of “Czech Made Man,” starring Jan Budař in a rags-to-riches story based on true events about a take on “entrepreneurship” by one Czech ordinary man, and will close April 23 at the Peklo cultural center.

Long but broken history

The original aim of the “FIlmy NAšich LEt” festival was to show “the most valuable film works of the Czech and Slovak production” and the criteria was “social involvement in the widest and most humane meaning of the word … and the search for new qualities and possibilities for film language.” All screenings were at the Moskva cinema — later known as Elektra — then the biggest cinema in Czechoslovakia with 1,100 seats.

After only three years, the festival was shut down in the early ’70s due to the “normalization” that followed the Soviet-led invasion. It restarted in 1990, after the fall of communism, in the Elektra cinema until it closed in 2007.

“The private owner of the Elektra cinema decided to change it into a shopping venue, and the festival had no choice but to find another venue,” festival coordinator Eva Košařová told Czech Position. “Luckily, the new venue at Měšťanská beseda is a perfect replacement, and the guests — especially the ones coming from abroad — totally love the renovated Art Nouveau building.”

Since then, Měšťanská beseda is where most screenings, meetings with filmmakers and some concerts take place.

But when it comes to program changes, 2002 was when the festival introduced new sections that vary each year, with only some constant ones. Since then, the festival program has included a competition of documentary films completed in the past year, tributes to Czech film icons, concerts, workshops, and discussion forums with guests.

“Until two years ago, the festival focused on the ’60s, and mapped every year of this golden era of Czech film in a section called Czech Cinema’s Most Turbulent Decade,” Košařová said. “After we had covered [the entire decade], we added a section called Phenomenon of Times, which looks as Czech film and social life in the ’70s and ’80s.” she added.

Febiofest celebrates 18 years

Despite it struggles with financing each year, Febiofest remains the Czech Republic’s second-biggest international film festival for feature films and still going strong and getting ready to celebrate its 18th birthday with 190 films from 56 countries.

As in the previous few years, the multiplex CineStar Praha – Anděl (formerly Village Cinemas) in Prague’s Smíchov district will become the center of the nine-day festival, ready to satisfy film buffs as well as music fans. A side project to the films, the Febiofest Music Festival will host close to 50 concerts — three or four in the multiplexes underground garage and two at the venue’s Pizzerie Mediterane on most days.

“With bands playing till early morning hours and film screenings starting as early as 8 a.m., Febiofest actually becomes almost a nonstop event this year, giving a chance to the festival’s greatest fans to spend all nine days here without interruption,” Fero Fenič, the festival’s director said.

Films and guests

The festival will open with three films: “Fair Game,” a spy drama based on a true story starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn; “Somewhere,” Sofia Coppola’s minimalist portrait of one Hollywood actor’s dark side starring Stephen Dorff; and “Mama Gógó,” Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s autobiographical film on an aging mother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, co-edited by the young Czech documentary maker Tomáš Potočný.

Friðriksson will be one of the many festival guests, along with Australian director Peter Weir who will receive the Kristián Award for contribution to world cinema. He is also scheduled to close the festival with “The Way Back,” his new film about a World War II–era escape from Siberian gulag and journey to India, starring Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell and Ed Harris.

Another festival guest, French director Olivier Assayas, will introduce his new film “Carlos,” based on the life of terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. The 330-minute long film, adapted from a minseries, will have two breaks, festival PR manager Pavel Sladký told Czech Position. He also recommends an older film by Olivier Assayas, “Irma Vep,” about an attempt to remake of a silent vampire film. “It stars the beautiful Maggie Cheung and has a really poetic touch to it,” he said.

The jury is in

Actress Dagmar Havlová, the wife of the former president and playwright Václav Havel, will take the honorary chair of the jury. Traditionally, 33 jurors are picked from various social backgrounds and occupations. The jury will pick a winning film from the 12 films in the New Europe section that connected by the topic of an adolescent hero struggling with the outside world.

After four years, the competition has a Czech film again. Václav Kardnka’s “Eighty Letters” (Osmdesát dopisů) is an autobiography about the director’s memories from 1987 about his mother’s plans to escape Czechoslovakia to England to reunite with his father. The film premiered at Berlinale film festival in February.

Another Czech films at the festival is “Normalis” in the Another Shore section. Amateur director Jan Wolf, now 24, started making the film when he was 21 and financed the entire film himself. Wolf was discovered by Fenič.

“The film is a real surprise. It’s stylish, [the director] can work with camera, atmosphere, the film’s editing is professional, this really is not an amateur film at all,” program director Štefan Uhrík said. Fenič compared the film to Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” calling it the first Czech truly independent film.

The annual Slovak day will belong to the brilliant actor Milan Lasica, whose films including the smart comedy “Run He’s Coming” (Utekajme, už ide!), about one family’s unique solution to communist-era housing problems. All films in this section are unfortunately in Slovak without English subtitles.

The festival has added another section this year to celebrate 80th birthday of the Barrandov Studios. Some 16 films will be screened at the Ponrepo cinema and range from the first film ever to be filmed at the studios “Murder on Ostrovní Street” (Vražda v Ostrovní ulici) by Svatopluk Innemann to the first normalization film “The Key” (Klíč) directed by Vladimír Čech.

Febio also offers a wide section focused on Swedish cinema, with films ranging from award-winning films from the 1950s and ’60s, Ingmar Bergman’s lesser-known early films through to fresh work of today’s filmmakers such as the hilarious “Sound of Noise,” which was a popular favorite at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

From the Asian Panorama, PR manager Sladký recommends two new films of a Korean director Hong Sang-soo: “Hahaha” and “Oki’s Movie.” They are for real cinephiles, he says.

Airport screenings

Prague Airport’s Terminal 2 will offer an unusual space for the annual non-cinema screenings Febiofest offers. Some previous unusual spaces included Prague’s main train station, a shopping center, a hospital and a museum. The films will all revolve around aviation topics made in the US and Czechoslovakia including “Con Air,” “Wrong Side Up” (Příběhy obyčejného šílenství), “The Aviator,” and older Jindřich Polák films such as “Heaven Riders” (Nebeští jezdci) and “Alarm in the Clouds” (Poplach v oblacích).

“There will be no catastrophic films screened there,” Fenič said, adding a free shuttle will be available for all festival guests between Anděl and the airport. One of the theaters built for the festival with some hundred seats will become a permanent fixture for all travelers.

Music and exhibition

Film fans can also stay for the music festival that changes the underground parking space below the cinema into a week-long party. Concerts will start a day early this year March 24 at 8 p.m. with V3ska and Sunflower Caravan. Other bands to perform at the underground improvised stages will be Čankišou, playing rock-based songs on exotic instruments, Tam Tam Orchestra with Afro-Brazilian tunes, and the legendary band Vltava.

Exhibitions by photographer and cameraman David Cysař featuring nine young filmmakers at Cinestar’s second floor and statues by Leopold Habermann at the Cinestar plaza will complete the artistic show.

Secrecy rules in Cinema Royal screenings

It’s 5:30 p.m. on a sunny Saturday and the first masked guests start to gather in the small gated park on Smetanovo nábřeží, in the very heart of Prague. After a while, a crowd of costumed people appears.

A flower girl gives flowers to everyone, an angel sways through the crowd, and other bizarre figures silently seduce the masked guests. The Czech national anthem is sung, followed by a dance. Suddenly, a tall man in top hat and cloak gathers everyone together. People who didn’t know each other several minutes ago start walking through the park to a secret place to see a still undisclosed film.

The crowd is participating in Cinema Royal, a secret screening project founded by an anonymous Prague-based team of cinema enthusiasts. The idea came from a similar project launched in 2007 in London under the name Secret Cinema. Since then, it has spread across the UK and US to the rest of the world.

“The main concept is to pull the audience into the atmosphere of the film. Watching films in the cinema is becoming monotonous, but to actually go someplace where the viewer can become part of the film and stay in its atmosphere for the rest of the night, that’s different,” says the Phantom, one of the anonymous organizers.

The element of secrecy also plays its important role — all of the key information about the screening is concealed until the last moment.

Potential audience members must register on a website or through a social networking site Facebook. Then, one day, members get an e-mail like this: “Sincerest greetings. It’s been two months since we last met. I'm writing to you again because I’ve been waiting for your reply ever since. I look more and more pitiful. I know this is love. I regret every moment I can’t stand by your side. I have adored you from the first day we met. I despise everyone else. Your existence is everything to me.”

Upon confirming your attendance, you get redirected to a page telling you where to buy a ticket. This time, it comes with a mask and directions to meet at the fountain at Smetanovo nábřeží.

“We want to give the people at least a hint of what the topic is, so they have a chance to participate. If they dress up for the occasion that also adds to the atmosphere of the evening,” Phantom said.

Location, location, location

The first Cinema Royal took place May 25 last year at the former headquarters of communist newspaper Rudé právo and screened the 1987 Czechoslovak film “Bony a klid,” about an underground group illegally trading foreign currency and vouchers for Western goods. Actors dressed up as Czechoslovak policemen shouting socialist slogans before the screening.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” was the second screening in September last year. Fans were lured to the old Walter Motors factory in the Jinonice district. After a five-month gap, an e-mail announced what seemed like a horror-style meeting at Nové Butovice, where actors chased the crowd to a closed floor of a shopping center to see the mall-themed zombie film “Dawn of the Dead.”

“To find the right place is always the hardest part,” said another team member who is a fundraiser, producer, and planner. “My colleagues, who are closer to film than I am, then pick the right one to be shown.” Actors, art decoration, chair elevation, technical equipment, bartenders and so on also need to be organized. ‘We wanted to cool it a bit this time, so we picked a location and film that would appeal to wider range of our audience.’Each member of the core team of six has an area of specialization. A list of possible locations exists, updated regularly with interesting places, but organizers declined to discuss any specific details. “We want to keep showing genre films in the future, usually these are in the original language with Czech subtitles,” the Phantom said.

According to his colleague, the aim of the most recent location and film was to show that the format is flexible. “We wanted to cool it a bit this time, so we picked a location and film that would appeal to a wider range of our audience. Though we know that our audience will mostly still be younger people who are not afraid to risk paying [for a surprise] and have fun dressing up for the occasion, we’d still like the screenings to vary, we don’t want people to say, yeah, they’ll chase us around again to some place and become predictable,” he said.

Underground cinema

When the masked guests and their mysterious guides reach the entrance to the garages of the New Stage of the National Theater, a descent underground begins. Deep in the fourth floor below the ground, a cinema is set up, dividing the audience in two groups sitting back to back to each other.

Here, three groups of 150 people each (due to the small space, three separate performances were scheduled for the night) will be shown the 1925 silent film “The Phantom of the Opera,” accompanied by electrical sounds by the musician that calls himself the Autumnist.

To fill in the time between the early screenings and the party that will take place at the New Stage’s top floor, beginning at 10 p.m. and lasting till the early morning hours, the National Theater offered a guided tour of the building to Cinema Royal guests, who will definitely not forget this experience — not until they receive a mysterious e-mail asking them to prepare for another royal screening experience.

Werich’s Fimfárum tales launch Czechs into 3D craze

The third entry in a series of animated fairy tales based on the classic Czech book “Fimfárum” by Jan Werich is also the first domestic effort to cash in on the recent craze for 3D animated feature films. Unlike most recent 3D films, though, the film uses puppet animation and not computer generated images (CGI).

“Fimfárum — Third Time Lucky 3D” (Fimfárum — Do třetice všeho dobrého 3D) contains three of Werich’s fairy tales: “How the Ogres Died Out in the Mountains,” “ The Hat and the Little Jay Feather,” and “Reason and Luck.” As with the previous two outings, archival recordings of Werich’s voice will be augmented by modern voice actors.

The middle tale —“The Hat and the Little Jay Feather” — concerns a king who sends his three sons to bring back a hat he left at a tavern when he was young. It was animated by Petr Poš and Vlasta Pospíšilová, co-director and animator of the first and second Fimfárum films, “Fimfárum Jana Wericha”and “Fimfárum 2”

The opening and closing tales were created and directed by new talents. The first story, where a film crews sets out to the Šumava mountains in Southern Bohemia to find out whether Ogres ever lived there, was directed by Kristina Dufková and animated by Denisa Grimmová Abrhámová. Dufková served as a producer on the short film “Bába,” which won first prize in the Cinéfondation section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.

The third and longest fairy tale, “Reason and Luck” is the most interesting. The two virtues of the title try to prove their importance by changing the life of a pig herder named Louis. This is the only story with a multinational team working on it. Director David Súkup was joined by Spanish animator Patricie Ortiz Martinéz, who lives in Prague.

The screenplays for all three tales were written by Jiří Kubíček. For “Reason and Luck” he added some modern embellishments to Werich’s original storyline. These include the presence of a (fictitious) website called budtekralem, meaning (become a king), and scenes showing that the inside of one character’s brain functions like a computer. These met with accolades from children present at a preview, but purists who grew up with the books and audio recording featuring Werich’s narration might not be so quick to approve.

Making the sequel in 3D with a Kč 30 million budget was a longer and more difficult process than with 2D animated films, according to the animators. “Things you can get away with in 2D animation just wouldn’t work in 3D,” Martin Vandas, producer of all three Fimfárum films, told the press, adding that filming with the new technology takes twice as long. The film took four years to make, 16 months of which involved the actual filming process. “We started post-production in September, and are still making minor changes as we speak,” Vandas said at the preview, making assurances that the film would be in its final from in time for its premiere.

But the investment should be worth it. “There’s a much bigger demand for animated films in the 3D format rather than 2D,” Vandas said. While the demand isn’t universal, it is strong on the demographic group that is most likely to see animated films. “There are still people who remain faithful to the older format plus some 4 percent of people have eyesight problems so they can’t watch 3D, but apart from that, audiences almost always choose 3D films, especially children.”

One problem the filmmakers encountered was the distance and size of the puppets and backgrounds, as 3D requires more space, and optical illusions that can be used to imply a large setting in a traditional film won’t work in 3D. The film will be screened at some 80 cinemas around the country, the majority of which needed to be upgraded to screen digital content.

Some 70 puppets were made for the movie, with one scene alone using 29. Each puppet has up to 40 movable parts, so some 100,000 movements were made for this scene. An animator could do five-seconds of film time on an average day. Up to 10 animators worked on different scenes at the same time, and no computer tricks were used in making the film.

Fimfárum 3D — Third Time Lucky Executive Producer: Martin Vandas Directors: Kristina Dufková, Vlasta Pospíšilová, David Súkup Screenplay: Jiří Kubíček, Martin Vandas Art direction: Denisa Grimmová Abrhámová, Petr Poš, Patricie Ortiz Martinéz Theme song: Jaroslav Uhlíř, Zdeněk Svěrák Premieres Feb. 10 Not all screenings are in 3D, check with the box office before purchasing tickets

Werich’s book contains 17 tales. The first film, “Fimfárum Jana Wericha,” had five tales and and “Fimfárum 2” had four. With the third film, that totals 12 stories that have been animated, leaving five undone. Vandas declined to confirm plans for another animated feature-length film.

Zděněk Svěrák and Jaroslav Uhlíř, who have been writing songs together for over 40 years, wrote the theme song for “Reason and Luck.” Svěrák, who also recorded the song, is a co-founder of Centrum Paraple, an organization that supports people in wheelchairs. His cooperation on the film led to an idea to help the center by offering the original Luck puppet to the highest bidder via the auction website Aukro.cz, while the entire sum raised will go to support of the center. Bidding started on Feb. 7 and will end Feb. 14.

A new book with the same title has also been released by children’s book publisher Albatros as a tie-in to the film. It contains all three fairy tales illustrated by 3D photographs, and includes special stereoscopic glasses.

The film will be screened in select Czech theaters in 2D with English subtitles, with plans for an English dubbed version for film festivals abroad as well.

‘Czech Dream’ team tackles cars, kimchi in ‘Nošovice!’

The latest documentary by Vít Klusák follows the impact of the construction of a Hyundai Motor Company plant on Nošovice, a small village in North Moravia that was previously best known for its sauerkraut. “All for the Good of the World and Nošovice!” examines the impact of the establishment of the massive automobile plant on the villagers and is the first Czech documentary to take a critical eye to an international corporation.

At 82 minutes, the film portrays how the South Korean company forced land buyouts from locals, the value to Nošovice residents of Kč 100,000 versus the pride of maintaining a family field, a work day consisting of 54.5 second-long operations at the assembly line, a secret Korean ritual and seven linden trees that survived the plant construction.

“Nošovice!” is not a radical departure in tone from Klusák’s previous documentaries —“Czech Dream” and “Czech Peace” — but represents his first time alone in the director’s chair: He had co-directed the earlier films with Filip Remunda, who this time served as the producer. They studied together at FAMU, the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts.

The duo’s first documentary, “Czech Dream” (a play on the “American Dream”) involved a controversial advertising campaign ahead of the opening of a nonexistent hypermarket. It got mixed reactions both from the media and certainly from the unwitting Czechs who went to the store’s “grand opening,” only to find a cloth facade in the middle of a field. However, the documentary won numerous awards abroad in 2005, including the JJ Star Award at the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea — an award that, ironically, almost shut Klusák off from filming at the Nošovice plant.

Following “Czech Dream,” Klusák and Remunda went on to film the heated debate over the planned construction of a US anti-missile radar station on Czech soil, at the former military base in the Brdy forest. “Czech Peace” premiered in March 2010, not long after the administration of US President Barack Obama had officially dropped the project.

Filming took three years and shows viewpoints of both sides of the camp including the meeting between then-President George Bush and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, protests from Jan Neoral, mayor of the village of Trokavec, and the establishment by pressure group Greenpeace of an independent state called Peaceland at the proposed spot of the radar base.

“Czech Peace” won praise from many critics and filmmakers including Michael Moore, who called it one of the best documentaries he had seen. Moore shot to fame with his own look at the auto industry in “Roger & Me” in 1989. “Nošovice!” has been nominated for a Czech Lion (Český lev) for Best Documentary and, at the Feb. 5 nominating ceremony, already received a prize from film critics and theoreticians for best documentary.

Unlike the subjects of both their previous films — the imaginary hypermarket or the never-to-be-built US radar base — the South Korean car plant in Nošovice is now a day-to-day reality to its residents.

Land disputes, labor trouble

Klusák says he became interested in the Hyundai story in 2005, after reading an article in the Czech weekly magazine Respekt that disclosed forced buyouts of fields from the locals and the practices the South Korean company used to bully them into selling.

He first brought his camera to Nošovice in 2006 and returned to the village two years later, when the plant had been already built and automobile production had begun. Despite the initial disagreement with filming, some Nošovice locals affected by the construction eventually agreed to tell their stories on camera.

“I cried all night sitting in my cellar,” says Josef Havlas, one of the last Nošovice villagers forced to sell land to make way for bulldozers while his neighbor welds a metal scarecrow out of old car parts, pins the life-threatening letter sent to him on its chest, and places it at the end of a road that once connected the village through the fields.

“They built the plant right in the middle of the village where the cabbage fields used to be,” Klusák said, adding it’s disconcerting how the villagers must now go all the way around the field to reach the Nošovice Town Hall, for example. Sauerkraut production still goes on in Nošovice, despite the cabbage fields now being several kilometers away from the village; scenes depicting women cultivating the vegetables with their supervisor provide a nice contrast to those shot inside the plant.

However, the gates of the kilometer-long building called “the silver UFO” by the locals due to its color — and sudden mysterious appearance — almost remained closed to the director. Just before the filming started, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Czech spokesman Petr Vaněk called Klusák and told him that the management had withdrawn its previous permission to film anything on the Hyundai premises.

“Apparently, the management in Seoul must approve everything of this sort, and when they looked me up online and saw ‘Czech Dream’ had won at the Korean festival, they got cold feet,” Klusák said. The management later reluctantly agreed that Klusák could film a tour through the factory — organized by Vaněk — to show the factory’s friendly face.

The tour, however, turns out a bit differently than the management would have liked and is just one of the scenes in the film mocking Hyundai’s efforts to do “all for the good of the world” or to “build our common future” — slogans the company has readily at hand.

Filming inside the factory came to an end when the filmmakers were forced to leave the premises by the security while shooting a scene where one worker, Ondřej Frank, has to stand on his tiptoes to attach a rubber piece to every car at the assembly line.

All for the Good of the World and Nošovice! (Vše pro dobro světa a Nošovic) Written and directed by: Vít Klusák Producers: Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda Czech premiere: Feb. 17, Kino Světozor, additional screenings at Bio Oko In Czech Trailer available here

True to his surname, Frank is the only one to openly speak about working conditions in the documentary — and was later fired. Klusák went to the media with the story, which resulted in a health and safety check by the authorities at the Nošovice plant and a fine of Kč 700,000 against Hyundai last year. “Conditions slightly improved after that, but I now hear everything is getting worse again and there might be another strike,” Klusák said.

That’s not quite the end of the story, though. There’s a surprise for the audience at the end of the ending credits worth waiting for, as the director broke a promise he made after finishing “Czech Dream” to never make an advertisement.

Japanese film festival looks beyond ‘extremes’

Now in its fourth year, the Eiga-sai–Festival of Contemporary Japanese Film starting this Friday will feature eight films which, while popular in their homeland, wouldn’t normally be screened for Czech audiences.

“Older Japanese films, anime, and ‘extreme’ [experimental] films were the only ones available on the Czech market before, but the films that are really popular in Japan have not been available, so we decided to finally bring these films here,” Robin Heřman, an expert on Japan who is behind the festival, told Czech Position.

Eiga-sai is the collective effort of the Czech-Japanese Association, the Japan Foundation and Lucerna Palace, supported by the Embassy of Japan in the Czech Republic. The films come from a variety of genres, from historical-themed anime to modern-day melodrama. While the festival is now relatively small, the organizers hope to be able to expand it future.

The film festival — which runs from Jan. 21 to 27 at Lucerna cinema — coincides with other events showcasing Japanese culture that will continue on in various venues across Prague until Feb. 24

Eiga-sai 2011 Lucerna cinema Vodickova 36, Prague 1 Jan. 21–27 www.eigasai.cz

“The desire for more contemporary Japanese film and the offer to finance this project from Japan happened simultaneously, so it all worked out almost magically,” Heřman said. The Japan Foundation covers the majority of the funding each year plus handles negotiation with film distributors; the rest of the money comes from other sponsors and the box-office receipts.

This year the festival will show eight films. One of the most-anticipated films of this year’s festival is a Czech premiere of “Norwegian Wood” (Noruwei no mori). Based on the best-selling novel by Haruki Murakami, the film uses the Beatles song as the catalyst for a flashback to a bittersweet tale set in the 1960s (unfortunately, this film will not been screend with English subtitles; all others in the festival will).

Another film highly recommended by Heřman is an example of top Japanese anime made during the genre’s boom in the ’80s, “The Dagger of Kamui” (Kamui no ken). Director Hayashi Shigeyuki, known by the alias Rintaro, was an important figure in the development of Japanese anime. The film is adapted from a series of novels set in the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

“Awakening” (Tamamoe!) and “Climber’s High” (Kuraimazu hai) can be described as psychological studies. “Awakening” follows a widow who starts to slowly unravel that there were things about her recently deceased husband that she didn’t know. The melodrama has some touches of humor as the widow tries to rebuild her life.

“Climber’s High” looks at the events surrounding a plane crash and the efforts of a reporter to be the first on the scene. The film — based on the real accident of Japan Airlines Flight 123 in 1985 — takes a quite different approach than the typical disaster flick.

Takeshi Kitano’s 1991 film “A Scene at the Sea” (Ano natsu ichiban shizukana umi) is a somewhat peotic film about a deaf garbage collector who is learning to surf. It is break from the director’s usual tales of police and criminals.

The family drama “Hotel Hibiscus” (Hoteru haibisukasu), the detective story “An Angel With Many Scars” (Kizu darake no tenshi) and the theatrical adaptation “The Youth of Kamiya Etsuko” (Kamiya Etsuko no seishun) round out the list.

Hopes for a bigger festival

“Right now, it’s not really a ‘festival’ in its true sense,” Heřman said. “We’d like to see more specified sections with debates, directors’ retrospectives, etc. The problem is that except for maybe Akira Kurosawa, the audience here does not really know directors famous in Japan. We are trying to change that by bringing their films to the festival, one by one.”The problem is that except for maybe Akira Kurosawa, the audience here does not really know directors famous in Japan.

Heřman added that documentaries, the presence of pop music in film, and the connection that exists between theater and film are other areas he’d like to see explored in upcoming festivals. Bringing Japanese films to other cities in the Czech Republic is also on his to-do list.

But all that depends not only on financing but also on whether Heřman can find people ready to devote their time and effort to the project for several years at the least. “We are looking for people like that at the moment,” he told Czech Position.

Theater, lectures and go

An accompanying program starts on Jan. 22 with the annual Japanese Culture Day also at Lucerna Palace. It’s main event is a traditional performance of shadows by puppeteer Noriyuki Sawa — a Prague-based artist known for combining traditional Japanese art with European elements. The performance, aimed at both children and adults, is separated into three parts — “The Cherry Orchard,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Little Mermaid” — and starts in the main screening hall at 2 p.m.

Saturday afternoon at Lucerna’s Marble Hall will be dedicated to hands-on opportunities to try Japanese traditional pastimes such as calligraphy, ink painting, paper folding and the popular board game “go.”

Heřman also recommends Dōjōji, an example of kabuki theater interpretation of Noh play performed Feb. 5 by Inoue Makoto at the Disk Theater, as well as the opening of the new permanent exhibit at the National Gallery in Prague titled Art of the Ancient World, which will display works from Asia and the Mediterranean.

But perhaps the most potentially interesting from the series of lectures to be held at the Embassy of Japan will be that of translator Tomáš Jurkovič titled “Mysterious Women in Haruki Murakami’s Novels.” As a translator of the celebrated author’s novels, Jurkovič has met the author several times and is considered an expert on hidden messages in Murakami’s novels. (The lectures are in Czech without translation.)

The month-long festival will close with a recital at the New Town Hall that will introduce Chikako Kanehisa and Kifu Mitsuhashi, two Japanese soloists who will interpret classical and contemporary pieces on traditional instruments.

The Czech-Japanese Association holds other events throughout the year. Two of the most interesting annual events include the Japanese spring celebration during the first week in June at Vyšehrad, which hosts numerous actors and actresses who perform traditional Japanese rituals welcoming spring. In November, the Police Museum in Prague hosts the annual Katana Matsuri, a celebration of what is commonly known as a “sword of the Samurai.”