2024-07-28 06:37:18
The largest non-competitive cinema festival in the country has entered its 50th anniversary year. The Summer Film School started in Uherské Hradiště this Friday. This year, it prepared 223 screenings, in total the audience will see 155 films in screening rooms and summer cinemas.
Part of the festival, which is organized by the Association of Czech Film Clubs and which is visited by thousands of people every year, is also a rich accompanying program. The event will last until next Thursday, August 1.
The summer film school showed 180 films last year. This year’s program includes more repeats of attractive items. “We have around 70 reruns, which is already a significant increase,” compares the director of the show, Radana Korená. Compared to previous years, one screening hall will be added, so altogether seven will be available to the audience. Possible queues will be directed by the coordinators so that people who cannot get to them after counting the waiting candidates do not stand in them unnecessarily.
Accreditations for any number of days are on sale, including portable packages of screening tickets. A one-day accreditation will cost 600 crowns, 150 crowns more than last year, and a six-day accreditation will cost 2,350 crowns, which is 400 crowns more expensive than in 2023. According to Korené, 2,000 accreditations were available for each day due to capacity reasons. “There is still a small reserve, so it is still possible to buy accreditation,” says the director.
According to the mayor of Uherské Hradiště, Stanislav Blaha from the ODS, the city is ready for festival visitors. The town hall supports the parade financially, this year with the amount of 3.8 million crowns. The amount is increased annually based on the concluded contract. “The summer film school brings a wonderful festival atmosphere to Uherské Hradiště. The city comes alive, it’s literally like a beehive,” praises Blaha.
Who gets the prize?
This year’s guest will be the ninety-two-year-old theater actor Jiří Suchý, who should spend Sunday and Monday here. At the festival, he will present the new documentary Pochodem vvodsk or Stop the State, which he filmed during the covid pandemic. Before that, he will receive the annual award. “It might seem that he does not have such a wide filmography that it is not entirely a matter of first choice as a film actor, film director. But his poetics goes through all kinds of art. Theater, television and film,” points out Iva Hejlíčková, program director of the show. Its visitors will also see the film The Bride from 1970, which Suchý also directed.
Director Ildikó Enyedi bude hostem festival. | Photo: Reuters
French director and screenwriter Arnaud Desplechin and Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi will arrive already on Friday. She will receive the award in the evening. This will come before the release of her 1989 film My 20th Century, which won Best Debut at the Cannes Film Festival. The summer film school will remind you of the author’s other films, including About Body and Soul, for which she received the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival seven years ago. “She is an excellent director whose films we have been watching for a long time and we like them,” Hejlíčková notes.
Desplechin will receive the award from the organizers before the screening of his latest film, Spectators! filmed this year. “It’s about the audience experience, about what we all experience, what is in a certain way the essence of the Summer Film School. And that is sitting together in the cinema and watching films together,” adds Jan Jílek, who is also the show’s program director. From Desplechin’s other films, the organizers selected the titles Hlídka or Uchená pré or My Sexual Life.
Other guests are the versatile American filmmaker Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Icelandic director Fridrik Thór Fridriksson or the British filmmaker Sean Ellis. A delegation will also arrive for Czech and Slovak news.
The festival will present a record 11 previews of Czech and Slovak films. It will present, for example, Světylka by Beata Parkanová, Adam Martinec’s feature debut Mord or Kristina Dufková’s animated comedy Life to Eat.
The program is divided into blocks History, Present, Czechia/Slovakia, Guests and AČFK presents. Visitors can see, for example, the works of the famous Italian director Federico Fellini or New Hollywood, which is the period of American cinema from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. There will also be films from Tunisia or the work of the American director and screenwriter David Lynch. A retrospective of films with music by composer Zdeňko Liška is also being prepared. In addition to all this, the festival attracts concerts, theater, professional programs, creative workshops and events for children. The program also includes a traveling exhibition prepared by the Czech Press Office, representing 100 years of its photographic reporting.
Three actresses in Vary
The first screenings started on Friday at noon, the ceremonial opening of the show is scheduled at the Hvězda cinema on Saturday evening. In the world premiere, the audience will see the Czech comedy Hello, Welcome directed by Šimon Holé. She follows three actresses at the Karlovy Vary festival. He reflects on the burning questions of the film environment or actor’s authenticity.
“The film was created as a reaction to my experience of the premieres at the Karlovy Vary festival. I was interested in how difficult it is for actors who are constantly in a role not to be in the role when they present themselves,” said the thirty-year-old director and screenwriter Holý in the podcast ČTK called Četkast na Filmovce.
Director Šimon Holý. | Photo: Honza Mudra
His new feature concludes the trilogy of low-budget feature films Mirrors in the Dark from 2021 and the following And Then Came Love…. Actresses Alena Doláková, Sara Venclovská and Eliška Soukupová took part in all three. “It made sense for me to conclude the trilogy together, because the film is somewhat based on the experiences we had together,” explains Holý.
Due to the much lower budget than is usual for Czech films, the shooting lasted only six days. The creators spent up to fifteen hours a day on the set. “We have all reached our physical and psychological bottom,” claims the graduate of FAMU in Prague.
Holý is currently preparing another trilogy, which will no longer be created in financially modest conditions. They will exchange them for foreign co-productions with multi-million dollar budgets. “I found that I work in trilogies, so after the low budget trilogy comes the coming-of-age trilogy,” he advises.
For several years now, the director has been preparing the film Thinking David about the coming out of a Jewish youth. He is personally connected to the subject, because he himself went through this fate.
After last year’s attack on Israel by the terrorist movement Hamas, which responded with a retaliatory military operation in the Gaza Strip, the artist decided to fundamentally change the scenario and reflect the current situation as well. Holé, who is of Jewish origin, is horrified by how many people from the Jewish community fear anti-Semitism on the one hand, but at the same time “close their eyes to the conflict and forget that hundreds of thousands of people are dying,” as he says.
Alena Doláková, Sara Venclovská and Eliška Soukupová in the film Hello, Welcome. | Photo: Aerofilms
At first, Holý took a restrained stance on the events in the region last fall. He is troubled by how the conflict has split society. “Jewish communities are extremely affected by this and disputes arise that last for many years. I have already seen many friendships that are really badly destroyed by this and may never be reunited,” he said.
In August, Šimon Holý will start shooting another film, Chica Chica, starring Pavla Tomicová and Jan Cina. He wants to film in several locations in the Czech Republic and France. Preparations for the film Thinking David will be delayed by several years, according to the director, the shooting date cannot yet be predicted.
Video: Trailer z filmu Hello, Welcome
The film Hello, Welcome will begin showing in theaters on August 8. | Video: Aerofilms