40th International Film Festival Karlovy Vary
July 1-9, 2005

>Report by Christopher Deacy       >Report by Ron Holloway

The Ecumenical Jury of the 40th Karlovy Vary IFF awards its prize to the film

Kinamand/Chinaman
by Henrik Ruben Genz (Denmark/China, 2005, 88 min.),

whose prosaic, everyday reality is the driving force behind a well-constructed story redolent in ecumenical, redemptive and liberating significance concerning the bridging of the divide between Danish and Chinese cultures. We were impressed with the film´s emphasis of the vulnerabilty of the legal status of immigrants and the transformation of the main character, Keld, who transcends his own limitations and fulfils his obligation to a woman with whom he had initially entered into an inauthentic marriage but who takes on a duty of care and responsibility towards her that surpasses even her death in the performance of a Chinese burial ritual.

Members of the Jury (from left to right): Margrit Frölich (Germany), Chris Deacy (United Kingdom), Matthias Loretan (Switzerland), Magali Van Reeth (France), Petr Siska (Czech Republic), Chairman of the Jury, and Jan Elias (Czech Republic)



Report on 40th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
1-9 July 2005

by Christopher Deacy, Member of the Ecumenical Jury

It may not have the same international profile as Cannes, Berlin or Venice, but the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, which takes place for 9 days every July in a beautiful spa town in the west of the Czech Republic, is an indubitably ‘A’ list event. A non-specialized festival with a competition of full-length feature as well as documentary films, which this year celebrated its 40th birthday, the KVIFF lay host to over 12,000 festival visitors, including 569 journalists, 968 film professionals and 361 filmmakers, among them Robert Redford, Sharon Stone and Liv Ullmann who were presented with Crystal Globes for Outstanding Achievement, as well as Matt Dillon, Michael Madsen and Alexander Payne, while American actress Ali MacGraw and British director Michael Radford were among the members of the Grand Jury. The lavish opening and closing ceremonies, which were broadcast on Czech television, also witnessed the presence of figures outside the world of film, including the Czech President and Prime Minister and the former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was born in Prague. Of the 242 feature films screened over the 9 days, 16 were world premieres, 27 were international premieres and 7 were European premieres. As a member of the Ecumenical Jury, my remit was to watch the 14 films in official competition – although with retrospectives at the festival of the films of Sam Peckinpah and Robert Redford and the screening of such new releases as Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller’s Sin City and Todd Solondz’s Palindromes film aficionados like myself had little trouble filling our days.

The Ecumenical Jury has been a staple of Karlovy Vary since 1994, and is comprised of representatives from the Protestant film organization INTERFILM and its Roman Catholic counterpart, SIGNIS. This year, the Jury was comprised of Petr Siska and Jan Eliáš from the Czech Republic, Margrit Frölich from Germany, Matthias Loretan from Switzerland, Magali Van Reeth from France, while I came from the United Kingdom. The remit of the Jury is to award a prize to a film which contributes to human progress and raises audience consciousness of the transcendent dimensions of life, or which portrays spiritual, social and human questions and dramatizes human values that are in harmony with that of the gospels. The jury also looks for themes relevant to Christian responsibility in modern society concerning respect for human dignity and human rights, solidarity with all kinds of minorities, disadvantaged and oppressed people, and support for the processes of liberation, justice, peace and reconciliation. The standard of films at this year’s competition was particularly high, and five films in particular were shortlisted by our jury.

What a Wonderful Place (Eyal Halfon, Israel, 2005) saw the unfolding of three interconnected stories in the multi-ethnic environment of contemporary Israel, and raised particularly important issues concerning the rights of minority communities, centring as it did on the plight of a group of Ukrainian women who at the start of the film pass through the barbed wire separating Israel and Jordan. In Unveiled (Angelina Maccarone, Germany/Austria, 2005), a 30-year old Iranian translator applies for political asylum in Germany, having fled her native country due to her lesbian orientation. After disguising herself as a man in order to facilitate her flight, the film, which is reminiscent at times of Kimberley Pierce’s Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry (1999), highlights the difficulties involved in any culture for someone with an unorthodox sexuality to fit in and be treated with respect and dignity. Tuning (Igor Sterk, Slovenia, 2005) was a modern tale, in the mould of Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997), about the dysfunctionality of a couple who, on the surface, have a happy marriage with two bright children and rewarding jobs, but who can no longer communicate with one another and look for meaning and fulfilment elsewhere, even if that means ultimately finding themselves back where they began in the film’s satisfyingly elusive denouement. In Portrait of a Lady Faraway (Ali Mosaffa, Iran, 2005), the themes of memory and loneliness underpin a haunting and intimate film from a first-time Iranian director about an architect who receives a message from an unknown woman who claims that she is about to commit suicide.

Despite such a strong calibre of films, the picture that we decided to give our prize to was Chinaman (Henrik Ruben Genz, Denmark/China, 2005), a joint Danish-Chinese movie set in Denmark whose prosaic, everyday reality is the driving-force behind a well-constructed story redolent in ecumenical, redemptive and liberating significance concerning the bridging of the divide between Danish and Chinese cultures. We were impressed by the film’s emphasis on the vulnerability of the legal status of immigrants and the transformation of the main character, Keld (Bjarne Henriksen), who transcends his own limitations and fulfils his obligation to a Chinese woman, played by Vivian Wu, with whom he had initially entered into an inauthentic marriage but who takes on a responsibility to care for her that transcends even her death with the performance of a Chinese burial ritual. The film also received the prize of the International Film Critics Jury, FIPRESCI, who drew particular attention to the film’s amusing and poignant portrayal of a vivid clash between two cultures, Occidental and Oriental, and the way that arranged marriages can lead to an emotional commitment in the face of social and political opposition.

The Grand Jury awarded its main prize to My Nikifor (Krzysztof Krauze, Poland, 2004) which concerns the unorthodox relationship between an academic painter and a disabled and illiterate naïve painter in 1960s Poland, noting both the originality of the story and the execution of the film. The Best Actress prize went to the 85-year old actress Krystyna Feldman, who played the male lead in the film, while the Best Actor prize was split between Uri Gavriel for his subtle and commanding presence at the centre of What a Wonderful Place and Luca Zingaretti for his unsentimental portrayal of Father Giuseppe Puglisi in Come into the Light (Roberto Faenza, Italy, 2005), a passionate and moving film, based on real events, about a Sicilian priest whose attempt to prevent street children from being recruited into criminal activity eventually led to his murder at the hands of the Mafia.

As well as being a well-organized and outstanding festival, the 40th KVIFF was a salutary reminder that too few of the films being produced around the world today receive an adequate distribution, and as a result will never have the luxury of competing for a share in the multiplex marketplace. Such was the breadth, diversity and quality of the films both in and out of competition that it would be gratifying to think that the profile they received at the festival will serve as a springboard for future commercial – and not just critical – respectability and acclaim.

by Ron Holloway

“Life Begins at Forty!” ran the trailer for this year’s 40th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1-9 July 2005). But, as some asked, was this really the 40th anniversary? Since the festival was officially founded in the summer of 1946 – thus making it older than Cannes, founded in September of 1946 – then KVIFF should rightly be 59 years old, in contrast to the 58th anniversary celebrated by Cannes last May. There are two bumps in the road, however. First of all, the Czech event was programmed in the neighboring spa of Marienbad for its first three years, not in Karlovy Vary at all. Secondly, beginning in 1958 and lasting until 1994, Karlovy Vary was forced by a FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) recommendation to alternate annually with Moscow. This festival carousel went on until 1994, when both Karlovy and Moscow scheduled annual festivals in the summer a few weeks apart from each other.

Be that as it may, Karlovy Vary celebrated its 40th birthday in grand style. Shortly after festival director Jiri Bartoska and artistic director Eva Zaoralova welcomed an assembly of prominent guests – including both Czech President Vaclav Klaus and retired Czech President Vaclav Havel – the curtain was raised on a gigantic paper-maché birthday cake, upon which danced forty smiling little girls dressed as candles. A screen in the background flashed spots from previous festival trailers – before this year’s trailer, produced by filmmaker David Ondricek, chronicled in leaps the progression over the years of a sassy baby to a burnt-out adult to a recharged male on his 40th birthday.

The icing on the birthday cake was a warm welcome extended to three film personalities. Jiri Krejcik, a veteran Czech director, was honored with a screening of his Vyssi princip (A Higher Principle) (1960), a drama about courage and cowardice as experienced by a teacher in a provincial town shortly after the Second World War. Then the audience in the Great Hall with its 12,000 seats rose in unison to greet Robert Redford, honored with a retrospective, and Madeleine Albright, the first woman secretary of state who was born in Czechoslovakia. Redford, in turn, saluted the achievements of Vaclav Havel in the audience, praising his engagement and fighting spirit during the period of Neo-Stalinism, and thanked the festival for welcoming back George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a film I personally viewed here in Karlovy Vary back in 1969 in the presence of actress Katherine Ross. Later, during the festival week, Liv Ulmann was also on hand for her retrospective as part of the tribute to “Nature and Landscape in Norwegian Cinema.” Among other VIP guests were Sharon Stone and Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information, Society and Media. And for those cineastes who never saw the masterpieces of the great Japanese animation director Kihachiro Kawamoto, whose work in puppet animation over the past three decades is equalled only by the Czech master Jiri Trnka.

Karlovy Vary, aka Karlsbad, is a favorite festival of many film professionals. Hotels and villas, national monuments and cure centers have all been restored, among them the splendid rococo Divaldo Theater, built in 1886 and opened back then with a performance of Mozart’s The Wedding of Figaro. Students and young cineastes from across the Czech Republic and Slovakia flock to this resort spa with backpacks, many of them sleeping in the park or under the stairs of the Hotel Thermal when it rains. With lines forming before the box office as early at 7:00 in the morning, the only problem is making a decision as to the four films one is entitled to see with a Participation ID Pass, after which they are often given permission to sit on the floor at any one of the nine venues with 14 screens. The same long line forms again during the mid-afternoon hours before the computer stand. With 278 films programmed in 22 sections, in addition to daily music concerts, the “KVIFF” is a paradise for the cultural thirsty.

This year, three international juries were assembled at Karlovy Vary to judge the International Competition of Feature Films, the Documentary Competition, and the newly installed “East of the West” Competition of Films from Central and Eastern Europe. In the past, “East of the West” (thus named because in former socialist times Prague in the Eastern Bloc was further west on the map than Vienna in the Western Camp) was a Philip Morris showcase with a hefty purse award to whet the appetite. This time around, Philip Morris is still funding the award without its name directly attached to the purse. By coincidence, three of the main prizes in all three competitions were awarded to films from what was formerly known as “Eastern Europe.”

Krzysztof Krauze’s Moj Nikifor (My Nikifor) (Poland) was awarded the Crystal Globe, the festival’s Grand Prix. Further, Krzysztof Krause was awarded Best Director, while 80-year-old Krystyna Feldman in the title role was awarded Best Actress – a surprise decision, if you will, because this popular woman bit-player was chosen over a male actor to interpret the life-style of a legendary naive painter. As the true-life story goes, Epifan Drowniak, also known as Nikifor Krynicki, was discovered in 1960 by another painter, Marian Wlosinski, who took him in and became his benefactor. Although physically handicapped and mentally disabled as well, Nikifor could paint beautiful primitive paintings in water-colors, which he then sold to guests at the Krynice spa (thus his nick-name). When his paintings were exhibited in a Paris gallery next to those of Rousseau, another master of naive art, Nikifor became famous overnight as a painter with a pure vision and stylistic grace. He died in 1968 of tuberculosis. Asked why he had chosen Krystyna Feldman, Krzysztof Krause gave a simple explanation: “Because she bears an uncanny resemblance to the real person.”

A share of the First Prize in the Documentary Competition was awarded to Galina Adamovich’s Boza moj (My God) (Belarus). This warming 20-minute portrait of Julite Karmaza shows how a humble elderly villager with an eternal smile on her face goes about mixing cement to create pious sculptures – Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Way of the Cross – and then carry them off to decorate cemeteries, shrines, and crossroads. Indeed, the entire landscape along the Belarus border to Lithuania is adorned with her remarkable works of homemade religious expression.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s Ragin (Russia) was awarded the “East of the West” Prize. Yet another adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Ward 6”, the setting is a psychiatric clinic somewhere deep in the provinces at the beginning of the 20th century. Ragin, the head doctor at the clinic, is obsessed with questionable experiments to find ways to help his mentally afflicted patients – until gradually, as in the Chekhov short story, he himself goes mad. Andrei Guskov gives a strong performance of a man on the brink of insanity in this debut feature film by a stage director and documentary filmmaker. According to Kirill Serebrennikov in an interview, Ragin personifies several pseudo-intellectuals in socialist times who bluffed their way to fame and fortune – “a practice that unfortunately is common even today.”

Two historical themes in the main competition were standouts. In Marta Meszaros’s A temetetlen halott (The Unburied Man) (Hungary) the last days of Imre Nagy are chronicled from a memoir written his daughter Erzsebet. Even today, no one knows exactly where the murdered Hungarian President and former Premier is buried. Following the suppression of the Hungarian Revolt in 1956, Imre Nagy (1896-1958) was transported to Romania with members of his family, where a secret show trial was conducted that led to his execution. Meszaros approaches the theme as though she is documenting a diary, offering little political commentary or critical analysis of events. The fate of Imre Nagy is interpreted by Polish actor Jan Nowicki, a favorite of Meszaros throughout her film career.

In Pavel Chukhrai’s Voditel dlva Very (A Driver for Vera) (Russia) the fate of a fictional General Serov, a naval admiral, is narrated as though this is a true historical event, albeit with flourishes of melodrama to draw the viewer closer to the tragic elements in the story. The setting is Sevastopol in 1962, two years before the overthrow of Nikita Khrushchev that marked the end of the “Thaw.” Knowing that he has enemies in government circles, who can resort to KGB methods without scruples, Serov wants to protect Vera, his pregnant handicapped daughter, from the same fate. So he turns to his driver, a young cadet yearning to win a place in the military academy in Moscow, and asks him to marry Vera with the promise of promotion. All is in vain – everyone loses, save for the new-born baby. Lensed by an outstanding cameraman, Igor Klebanov, the rugged Black Sea coast provides an apt backdrop for this historical drama of would-be winners and tragic losers. One might contend that in Vera’s Driver Pavel Chukhrai is also paying his respects to his father, the legendary Grigory Chukhrai, whose Ballada o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier) (1959) and Chistoye nebo (Clear Skies) (1961) were highlights of the Khrushchev “Thaw” period. Both films were made in the same period of time explored by Pavel Chukhrai in Vera’s Driver.

AWARDS

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Crystal Globe – Grand Prix
Moj Nikifor (My Nikifor) (Poland), dir Krzysztof Krauze
Special Jury Prize
Eize makom nifla (What a Wonderful Place) (Israel), dir Eyal Halfon
Best Director
Krzysztof Krauze, Moj Nikifor (My Nikifor) (Poland)
Best Actress
Krystyna Feldman, Moj Nikifor (My Nikifor) (Poland), dir Krzysztof Krauze
Best Actor (ex aequo)
Luca Zingaretti, Alla luce del sole (Come into the Light) (Italy), dir Roberto Faenza
Uri Gavriel, Eize makom nifla (What a Wonderful Place), (Israel), dir Eyal Halfon
Special Mention
Noriko no shokutaku (Noriko’s Dinner Table) (Japan), dir Sion Sono

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Best Long Documentary
Estamira (Brazil), dir Marcos Prado
Special Mention
Mad Hot Ballroom (USA), Marilyn Agrelo
Best Short Documentary
Boza moj (My God) (Belarus), dir Galina Adamovich

EAST OF THE WEST COMPETITION
Best Film
Ragin (Russia), dir Kirill Serebrennikov
Special Mention
Wesele (The Wedding) (Poland), dir Wojtek Smarzowski

NON-STATUTORY AWARDS

International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize
Kinamand (Chinaman) (Denmark/China), dir Henrik Ruben Genz

Ecumenical Prize
Kinamand (Chinaman) (Denmark/China), dir Henrik Ruben Genz

Don Quixote Prize (FICC – International Federation of Film Clubs)
Noriko no Shokutaku (Noriko’s Dinner Table) (Japan), dir Sion Sono
Special Mention
Moj Nikifor (My Nikifor) (Poland), dir Krzysztof Krauze

Young Czech Critics Jury Award – Another View section
Parvane ha badraghe mikonand (The Butterflies Are Just a Step Behind) (Iran),
dir. Mohammad Ebrahim Moaiery

Czech Television Award – Independent Camera Prize – Forum of Independents
Los Muertos (The Dead) (Argentina), dir Lisandro Alonso

Pravo Audience Award
La vie avec mon père (Life with My Father) (Canada), dir Sébastien Rose

Awards for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema
Jirí Krejcík, Czech Republic
Robert Redford, USA
Sharon Stone, USA
Liv Ullmann, Norway