37th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2002

The Grand Prize, an imposing Crystal Globe, was awarded at the 37th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (4-13 July 2002) to the Czech entry that opened the festival: Petr Zelenka’s Rok d'abla (The Year of the Devil). In this self styled »mock documentary« Zelenka and his cameraman Miro Gabor follow Jaromir Nohavica, a popular rock singer-songwriter, and his Cechomor Band on a make-believe tour across country as funeral musicians. They perform at a rehabilitation center, in an open-pit strip-mine, and at other »mystical places trodden by angels and devils in the land of silence and booze« (Zelenka). En route, the band meets a Dutch documentary filmmaker, who joins in the fun, and an Australian conductor from the Sydney Opera played by Jaz Coleman, the former lead singer of the Killing Joke rock band.

        »New Czech Cinema« is spearheaded by a phalanx of talented young filmmakers: Jan Sverak (Kolja, 1996), Vladimir Michalek (Forgotten Light, 1996), Pavel Marek (Dead Beetle, 1998), Sasa Gedeon (Return of the Idiot, 1999), Jan Hrebejk (Cozy Dens, 1999), Alice Nellis (Ene Mene, 1999), David Ondrisek (Loners, 2000), Tomas Vorel (Out of the City, 2000), Petr Vaclav (Parallel Worlds, 2001), and Bohdan Slama (Wild Bees, 2002), to name just those at the tip of the iceberg. Petr Zelenka, the most original of the bunch, has directed documentaries and feature films, written several screenplays, and recently authored a successful stage play. Zelenka’s Mnaga ­ Happy End (1996), the first of his amusing »mock-docs« that also dealt with a mythical rockband, was awarded the Special Prize at the Cottbus festival. His first feature film, Buttoners (1997), a collection of absurd tales about everyday perversity, received the Tiger Award at Rotterdam, the Golden Rose at Bergamo, and the Czech Lion for Best Film. His screenplay for David Ondrisek’s Loners, a comedy about young people on the loose in today’s Prague, was a top commercial hit of the 2000 season. That same year, he reworked one of the unused stories from Loners to write-and-direct the short feature Powers, the Czech contribution to the Erotic Tales series produced by Ziegler Film in Berlin. At the same time that Peter Zelenka was being awarded the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary, his stage play, Tales of Ordinary Madness, was enjoying a long run at theaters in Prague and Moscow. A self-styled tragicomedy, it depicts the shattered hopes, screwball ploys, and never-say-die mentality of the younger generation during the decade following the Velvet Revolution of 1989. A Zelenka project on the wing is his third »mock-doc« inspired by Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider. He was last seen scouting locations in the United States and interviewing Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) in the company of two Japanese women journalists.

        Also at Karlovy Vary, Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa (Germany) was awarded the Special Jury Prize, the International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize, and the Audience Prize. Set in Kenya during the late thirties, it chronicles through the eyes of a sensitive young girl the emigration of her Jewish family to Africa. Khaled (Canada), portraying the dilemma of a lad who tries to hide the sudden death of his ill mother in a Toronto flat because he doesn’t want to be sent to an unloving foster home, won Asghar Massombagi the Best Director award. Agust Gudmundsson’s The Seagull’s Laughter (Iceland) features a captivating ­ Best Actress ­ performance by Ugla Egilsdottir as a lovely young widow of an American serviceman who returns home to begin a new life among suspicious neighbors. William H. Macey was awarded Best Actor for his role as an innocent bystander targeted for racism in Neal Slavin’s Focus (USA), set in the Brooklyn during the 1940s and based on a novel by Arthur Miller.

Ronald Holloway