Czech it out

Dave Calhoun joins the film-loving backpackers at the Czech Republic's eccentric Karlovy-Vary film festival.

Jul 12 2006

The Karlovy-Vary film festival in the Czech Republic opened this year with 'Time', the new film from Kim Ki-Duk, the prolific Korean director of 'The Isle' and 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… And Spring'.

Was the film's inclusion as a world premiere at the Czech festival a sign of this 41-year-old festival's status as one of Europe's best kept cinematic secrets? The festival is certainly an accessible showcase of high quality work that lurks in the shadow of other, more scene-stealing events such as Venice and Cannes. Or was it more an indication of Ki-Duk's fading allure among the film community? We can probably assume that Ki-Duk's film would not have been guaranteed such a prominent fanfare elsewhere.

Both are true, I'd say. 'Time' failed to impress with its scrappy, half-cocked take on our increasing, flawed desire to reverse the ageing process with cosmetic surgery: a young man and woman enter a bizarre tit-for-tat game of facial reconstruction yet, funnily enough, fail to find true love along the way. 'Time' is crude and feels hurried in conception and execution. But the film, like its director, certainly had its fans among the young crowds that flock to this Bohemian spa town every summer, backpacks and screening guides at the ready to catch a busy programme of cinema that offers a host of new work from eastern Europe as well as a strong selection from elsewhere on the globe.

This year, Time Out spent only the opening weekend at the nine-day festival but was impressed by the quality and breadth of cinema on offer and the carnival atmosphere that takes over this quaint tourist town as a mix of students, filmmakers and other cineastes converge together for an unusually democratic experience that involves journalists braving the stark, flip-up wooden seats of the local (non-air conditioned) cinema with rows of beer-swilling teenagers.

Over two-and-a-half days, this writer saw films including Sophie Fiennes's 'A Pervert's Guide to Cinema', in which the charismatic Slovenian philosopher/psycho-analyst Slavoj Zizek applies Freudian analysis to some of Hollywood's best work (with particular emphasis on Hitchcock and Lynch); Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's 'Brothers of the Head', an intriguing and well-executed British mockumentary about two conjoined twins that are co-opted by the music industry in the late 1970s to become rock's next big thing; and 'Bothersome Man', a creepy, imaginative take on the afterlife by young Norweigan director Jens Lien (who studied at the London Film School and so supports the assertion, recently made by the school's head, Ben Gibson in these pages that the LFS fosters open-minded talent globally).

The festival is endearingly eccentric. Its headquarters, around which crowds swarm day and night, is the gargantuan Hotel Thermal, which looks as if some architectural joker has dumped one of Slough's finest multi-storey concrete car parks in the middle of a UnescoWorld Heritage site. There was also unintentional comedy – that soon turned to dread – to be had from the bizarre festival trailer that played before every movie and looked as if it was directed by an under-par Matthew Barney asked to make a one-minute version of 'Cremaster' for £15. And where else can you walk into a party for a new Czech film and share a drink with the charming Danny Huston, in town to introduce a retrospective of his father's work?

The eccentricities also extended to the festival's decision to hand an award to Andy Garcia for his 'outstanding contribution to world cinema'. Garcia was in town to support the European premiere of his directorial debut 'Lost City' (not seen by this critic, but reports are negative). It's a long way to travel, I suppose, just to introduce a couple of screenings and go home again. Fortunately for Garcia then, he also had the chance to gush freely on stage about his career during the opening ceremony while four trampolinists – yes, trampolinists – bounced behind him in formation. Those Czechs certainly know how to party. I'm not so convinced of their definition of 'outstanding contribution to world cinema' though.

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