With its 51st outing, the Zlín Film Festival — one of the world’s oldest and biggest film festivals for children and youth — begins another era with a shortened official name and streamlined logo. The event will showcase 244 films from 43 countries. Films will be broken up into more than a dozen categories, including four competitive international sections: animated films for children, feature films for children, feature films for youth and first time European feature films. Czech films will feature prominently in all of the competitions.
The festival — until recently known as the Zlín International Film Festival for Children and Youth — will open with the 3D Czech musical comedy “Under the Duvet” (V Peřině), by which its makers describe as being in the “high-spirited style of Mamma Mia.” The special-effects filled musical — directed by F.A. Brabec and starring Lucie Bílá, Karel Roden and Bolek Polívka — includes 22 original songs from Czech bands Support Lesbiens and Kabát. “Under the Duvet” will be part of the competition for feature films for children together with Zdeněk Troška’s new fairy tale “The Devil’s Bride” (Ďáblova nevěsta) — along with films from South Korea, Sri Lanka, Belgium, Norway, Italy and Germany.
A Czech film will also compete in another category for films aimed at older children or young adults: “One Way Ticket” (Piko), directed by Tomáš Řehořek about the street dug Pervitin — a type of methamphetamine. Director Řehořek, still in his 20s, is quite prolific, as this 2010 film isn’t even his most recent one. He also directed “Czech Made Man,” which is currently in cinemas and will be at the festival in a noncompetative section for recent Czech films. “One Way Ticket” will compete against “Hold Me Tight,” an award-winning Danish film that also played at Febiofest earlier this year, as well as six other films.
The films in these two categories will be judged a jury that includes Czech director Jan Hřebejk, Canadian actress Stana Katic and Japanese-born composer Youki Yamamoto, who has lived in the UK since we was 10. Katic will also introduce her new film,“For Lovers Only,” a look at two people in love on an unplanned journey across France. Yamamoto participated in the soundtrack to “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Separate juries comprising children and young adults will also give awards.
The section for European debut films will see an entry by a native son from Zlín. Václav Karnka will compete with his film “80 Letters” (Osmdesát dopisů), which already won at Finále film festival in Plzeň this year. The minimalist movie shows one day in the life of a young boy whose mother is trying to reunite with the boy’s father in England during the communist era. It is based on the director’s memories of his own childhood.
The last Czech contestant is in the animated film category. The short film “Graffitiger” by Libor Pixa has already won the Magnesia Award for best student film a Czech Lion (Český lev) awards, and has been nominated for a Student Oscar. That prize will be given out June 11 in Hollywood by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The film combines animation on real backgrounds to tell a melancholy tale of a graffiti image of a tiger who lives on the walls of various Prague buildings and structures. ‘Scandinavia, Germany, Canada, and even Iran are ahead of us. But we are trying to change this trend.’
The Czech lands have a long history of making cinema for young people. “Czech or Czechoslovak films for children won the biggest international praise in the second half of the 20th century. Numerous foreign film productions were inspired by our approach to production for children and youth,” festival artistic director Petr Koliha told Czech Position.
But there are areas where the country now needs to catch up. “Czech films try to keep their mentality, humor, strong storyline and also nurture the fairy-tale genre, which has been disappearing lately in the world, that is if we don’t count fantasy or history adventures. We let in new influences, which is good, but we also lack stories from the present: ordinary life, schools, families, these topics used to be our strength in the past, but now Scandinavia, Germany, Canada, and even Iran are ahead of us. But we are trying to change this trend.”
Focus on Italy
Aside from the competitons, this year’s major focus is on Italian cinema. Works by Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone and Roberto Begnini as well as the best of recent Italian cinema for children and youth will be showcased.
Older classics worth catching include the beautiful epic “Cinema Paradiso” by Guiseppe Tornatore, where the director recalls his childhood spent in a small rural cinema, and the Neorealist masterpiece “The Bicycle Thieves” by Vittorio De Sica. The latter film used nonprofessional actors and real locations to depict a boy and his father searching for their bicycle, which was an essential possession in postwar Italy. The film won countless awards including an honorary Academy Award in 1950 for best foreign-language film released in the US. (The official competitive category for foreign film Oscars didn’t begin until 1957.)
Most people associate entertainment giant Walt Disney Company with children’s films, and some efforts by this studio will be represented in a section called Walt Disney’s Kingdom, featuring Czech-dubbed versions of seven films made between 1937 and this year. Aside from 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the avant-garde animated musical “Fantasia” and opposites-attract love story “Lady and the Tramp” will be screened. The studios most recent animated effort “Winnie the Pooh,” currently in cinemas, will also make an appearance.
Some of the special guests at the festival include Hungarian director György Pálfi, whose latest mainly improvised film “I Am Not Your Friend” competed at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in 2009 and who is better-known for his controversial film “Taxidermia,” and the Italian actor Franco Nero, who is most famous for his roles spaghetti Westerns. Pálfi be a member of the jury for European debuts.
“Director Jíří Menzel, the living legend of Czech film Otakar Vávra and other Czech actors, actresses and directors will also be present. The actor Petr Nárožný will receive [an award called] Recognition for Creative Contribution to Filmmaking for Children and Youth at the closing ceremony,” Koliha added. Nárožný has appeared in more than 170 film and TV roles during the last decade and is noted for his comic roles.
For real cinephiles the festival is reviving the world’s first interactive film with a fitting name kinoautomat, which was invented by Radúz Činčera and enables the audience to steer the film by voting at several key moments. It was first introduced inthe Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal, where it ran for six months. The film screened was “One Man and His House” (Člověk a jeho dům) and starred the popular film and theater actor and director Miroslav Horníček. The film was banned in 1971 by the Communist Party. The film was restored in 2006 by the inventor’s daughter Alena Činčerová.
The amount of choice the audience actually has is limited, though. Even though the audience can vote at certain points to determine how an actor should behave, after the several minutes both options synch up to the same result before the next chance to vote comes. This kept the number of reels needed for a projection down to a manageable number.
Beyond the screen
As with most film festivals — especially those held in the summer — there is more to do than just see films indoors. “The accompanying program is really rich this year again. It includes music concerts, 11 exhibitions, events for children, workshops and night screenings at an open-air cinema, where one can sit on the grass with a nice drink,” Koliha said.
One exhibition contains 130 cinema clapperboards painted each year by famous artists. These clappers — which were also displayed in Prague until May 15 — will be auctioned June 3 at the festival’s main venue, the Zlaté Jablko shopping center and its Golden Apple Cinema, to help finance student films made at the Zlín film school.
Artists for the clappers include animator Zdeněk Miler, famous for Krtek and other characters. He began his career at the Zlín animation film studios. Last year’s auction raised Kč 2.143 million, with one donated that year by Miler accounting for Kč 170,000. Other clapper artists include Iva Hüttnerová, Jan Saudek, Boris Jirků, Olbram Zoubek and Miloš Nesvadba.
One popular aspect of the festival takes films out of the cinema and puts them on the rails across Moravia. The Cinematrain (Kinematovlak) project was launched in 2004 to bring films to Moravian towns that often lack their own cinemas. The special coach with 40 seats and a digital projector will screen films for schools and the public. The train began its journey May 11 in Olomouc and will end June 2 when it arrives at the festival’s base.
Zlín has a long film history. In 1936 the first film studios were established to produce advertising spots for Baťa Shoes, and since the 1940s the studios have dedicated their work to films for children and youth. During the early years of World War II, a film festival called Film Harvest (Zlienale) took place there, attracting many Czech and international film stars before it was shut down by the German occupation government. However, 20 years later, the festival was restarted and has run for 51 years without interruption.
“The festival has boomed in the past 15 years. Today, together with KVIFF, it is one of the [country’s] two biggest festivals, and a leader in children’s and youth films in the world. We host 2,000 guests every year and also had 100,000 visitors last year, which proves its rightful place among other similar festivals abroad,” Koliha said.
No comments:
Post a Comment