Freedom Film Festival Tributes in Los Angeles ­ 21 - 26 February 2002

On stage at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (left to right): Margit Kleinman, programmer at GILA, Ron Holloway, KINO editor, and Gary McVey, Executive Director, American Cinema Foundation.
       The occasion was the American Cinema Foundation Freedom Award presented to Ron and Dorothea Holloway »for opening our eyes to the East.« ­ and the screening of their two documentaries: Klimov (1994), a portrait of Elem Klimov, and Parajanov: A Requiem (1994), a tribute to the late Sergei Parajanov.
        Dorothea Holloway was doubly honored ­ as the actress Dorothea Moritz and film journalist and publisher of KINO German Film and International Reports for the past two decades. Four other Berliners were also awarded for the same general »eye-opening« reasons: producer Manfred Durniok (see opposite page ), documentary filmmaker Volker Koepp, and Erika and Ulrich Gregor, who founded the Arsenal Kino and were the organizational leaders for thirty years of the International Forum of Young Cinema at the Berlinale. The Gregors joined a panel one evening to discuss ’The Future of Film Festivals’. A compilation video of highlights from productions produced and directed by Manfred Durniok was programmed at the Goethe-Institut, a program that only scratched the surface of a long filmmaking career that included an Oscar for Istvan Szabo’s Mephisto (1981). Volker Koepp introduced and discussed three of his award-winning documentaries: Wittstock, Wittstock (1974-97), Die Wismut (1993), and Herr Zwilling and Frau Zuckermann (1999). As for the Los Angeles Freedom Film Festival 2002 screenings, this numbered: Andrzej Wajda’s The Condemnation of Franciszek Klos (Poland), Murad M. Ibragimbekov’s True Stories (Azerbaijan/Russia), Robert Buchar and David Smith’s documentary on Czech filmmaker, Velvet Hangover (USA), Gyula Gazdag’s seminal The Whistling Cobblestone (1971) and Swinging on the Treadmill (1974), Ibolya Fekete’s Chico (Hungary/Germany/Croatia/Chile), Lucian Pintilie’s An Afternoon with a Torturer (Romania/France), and Artur Aristakisyan’s A Place on Earth (Russia), winner of the Philip Morris Freedom Award at the 2001 Karlovy Vary film festival.
        Always well attended, the Freedom Film Festival drew an audience as informed as it was curious. And it fulfilled its mandate »to help establish a cultural dialog about the issues of democracy and liberty, and remind us that art must respect history.« (Gary McVey) Truly, the FFF has grown from an acorn into an oak! Just see: www.cinemafoundation.com

­ Editors