Archive: Culture | Film Film
Europe's biggest human rights documentary festival gets underway in Prague
The 10th Jeden Svět (One World) festival of human rights documentary films
begins in Prague on Wednesday night. The focus of the 2008 festival is on
dictatorships, while other highlights will include rare Czechoslovak
documentaries from the 1960s hidden away for decades. And this year’s
One
World is – for the first time – also set to visit a number of world
cities. More
Alice Nellis film wins Czech Lion
Saturday night saw the Czech Republic host its annual national film awards,
known as the Český Lev, or Czech Lion. No single film swept the board,
but director Alice Nellis’s film Tajnosti, or Little Girl Blue came away
with best film.
More
Shockproof Film Festival: the very best of B-movies
A Bucket of Blood, The Bride of the Monster and Blood Feast: what do these
rather unusual titles have in common? Apparently they’re some of the
worst movies ever made, and this week you have the rare chance of seeing
them on the big screen. The Shockproof Film Festival got underway at
Prague’s Aero cinema on Tuesday; I spoke to the festival’s organiser
Petr Šaroch.
More
Jiří Stránský: a doctor of prison sciences
As a writer Jiří Stránský has never had to look far beyond his own
extraordinary life story for inspiration. He was born in 1931 into an
influential Prague political family – in fact his maternal grandfather
even served for three years as prime minister in the 1930s. During the
German occupation Jiří’s father Karel survived Auschwitz, and as a
teenager Jiří took part in the Prague Uprising in the last days of the
war. But ironically, the family suffered just as much under the communists
after the war as they had under the Germans. They had never made any secret
of their dislike of both political extremes. Jiří was not allowed to
study and in 1953 was arrested on fictitious charges of spying. He was
sentenced to eight years in prison, much of which he spent working in a
uranium mine. Paradoxically, it was here that Jiří Stránský found the
inspiration to write. This was the time of the Stalinist purges, and he
found himself alongside some of the writers he most respected, including
the well known Brno poet, Jan Zahradníček. In a busy Prague café, Jiří
told me about how these writers became his role model.
More
Cheap DVDs distributed by newspapers flooding Czech market
In 2007 almost all of the Czech Republic’s national newspapers began
offering their readers cheap DVDs. Such movies are not free supplements as
you might get in the UK for instance, but are sold separately at an
extremely low cost. These DVDs have become a real phenomenon, with almost
60 million entering distribution last year. What does this mean for the
industry? And can the boom last? More
Citizen Havel premieres at Berlin Film Festival
Citizen Havel – a fly-on-the-wall documentary following former head of
state Václav Havel through two presidential terms - has been a big success
amongst Czech cinemagoers since its release two weeks ago. But how will
foreign audiences react to the film? Last night, Citizen Havel was
premiered to an international audience at the Berlin Film Festival. Czech
journalist Tereza Brdečková was there, she described the atmosphere at
the event:
More
Lenka Vochocová: checking out people’s prejudices
Lenka Vochocová is twenty-eight, but looks more like eighteen. She may not
look like it, but she has already managed to establish and successfully run
an NGO called Inventura which helps people with learning disabilities. She
has also organized a film festival screening animated films made by some of
the people her NGO has helped. I met Lenka Vochocová at her office in
Prague’s Smíchov district, to ask her more about her activities:
More
Seventy-five years of film at Barrandov studios
Last week Prague’s Barrandov studios celebrated 75 years of movie-making.
On January 25, 1933, filming started on the thriller ‘Vrazda v Ostrovni
ulici’ (Murder on Ostrovni street), a film which dazzled Czech critics
and cinemagoers at the time with its state of the art sound effects. Over
the years, the studios have played home to the famous Czech new-wave films
of the 1960s, and in more recent years Hollywood blockbusters like James
Bond and The Chronicles of Narnia. Earlier this week I paid Barrandov a
visit to wish it a happy birthday and talk to Mr Vladimír Kuba, the
studios’ CEO:
More
Citizen Havel lifts curtain on playwright-turned-president’s decade in office
Citizen Havel, a new fly-on-the-wall documentary about the former Czech
president, premiered on Wednesday night in Prague. The film draws on 45
hours of unique behind-the-scenes footage of Václav Havel shot over a
period of 13 years. The result is a film that lifts the curtain on the
Havel presidency, in a way that no other politician has been captured on
screen before.
More
Tomáš Baldýnský – film critic AND chair of state film support body
Tomáš Baldýnský is one of the Czech Republic’s leading film critics
and is known for not pulling any punches in his reviews. He is also the
unpaid chairman of the government body which supports Czech film-making,
though his term in the post ends soon. When we met the other day we
discussed how he manages to reconcile those two activities. But that was
after I put it to Tomáš Baldýnský that given the fact most movies
aren’t particularly good, it must be hard to maintain his enthusiasm for
reviewing.
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