Czech Film Fest Reflects Surroundings

In the heart of Western Bohemia, just 80 miles west of Prague, stands the monolithic Hotel Thermal, 15 floors of plate-glass Socialist modernity and home of the 28th International Film Festival of Karlovy Vary. Known for centuries as the magical spa town of Carlsbad, Karlovy Vary was long a favored place of pilgrimage for Russian aristocrats, European royalty, and the wealthy and famous from across the Continent who came to drink from the mineral waters that rise in springs throughout the region.

Since 1946, pilgrims of a different sort have had a reason to travel here. In that year, the first International Film Festival of Karlovy Vary was organized--the same year the Cannes festival was founded.

Throughout the first decade of the yearly festival, even after the Communist takeover in 1948, stars and directors such as Billy Wilder, Roberto Rossellini and Luis Bunuel came from all over the world in increasing numbers, and the festival grew in importance through the golden era of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s.

The festival flourished in those years, despite the fact that in 1957 the Soviets, having launched a festival of their own, decided to make Karlovy Vary a biannual event, alternating it with somewhat more lavish ceremonies in Moscow.

The mood at this year’s festival, held last week, was animated but far from optimistic. Most of the journalists covering it were Czech or Slovak, with a cross-section from Western Europe, and many gathered nightly around the lounge TVs to watch the latest announcements as the country moved steadily toward separation into two independent republics.

The tone of the festival was boldly set by its president, the distinguished director Jiri Menzel: “As a result of the well-known situation in the past, the festival has lost a lot of its reputation. Its long tradition has been spoiled, as almost everything else in this country.”

Indeed, the problems and strengths surrounding the Karlovy Vary festival reflect the general condition of the country.

Pavel Cerny is president of the East European Film Office. Its main offices are in North Hollywood, but Cerny, 46, has been traveling back and forth for years, representing U.S. films and expending a great deal of energy, most often at his own expense, promoting East European film in the States. “Every European star used to come here,” Cerny says. “At 14, I remember watching Claudia Cardinale’s bosom falling out of her dress. I was absolutely in love.”

Most of the festival winners then were Soviet or Czech; second- and third-place honors often went to Hungarian, Polish or East German productions. (One exception: “The Salt of the Earth,” a proletarian film banned in the United States during the McCarthy era.) “Nevertheless,” says Cerny, “it was the only place you could see films outside of competition. It was our main connection to the current foreign cinema.”

This year, there were enough Czech, Slovak and international celebrities in attendance to feed a steady stream of press conferences, though festival organizers were disappointed that others, such as Barbra Streisand and Dennis Hopper, whose participation was tentatively announced, did not attend. Producer David Puttnam arrived for the opening weekend, which featured a screening of the 1966 film “Marketa Lazarova” by Frantisek Vlacil. During the week, directors Jan Jost, Lizzie Borden and the Coen brothers introduced several of their recent films. (When asked by a Czech journalist why there was so much blood and fire in their films, Ethan Coen replied: “I guess it’s a color thing.”)

The serious problems facing Czech cinema--and by extension those of Eastern and Central Europe--seemed to have been distilled in a couple of films in particular. One of these, “Martha and I,” was directed by octogenarian Jiri Weiss, the preeminent filmmaker spanning the years between World War II and the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. Weiss, who left the country after the Soviet invasion of 1968 and later obtained U.S. citizenship, waited 20 years to make his next film, financed only after stars Michel Piccoli and Marianne Saegebrecht committed their talents.

Set in prewar Prague, it tells the story of a Jewish doctor and the maid who eventually became his wife. Filming began before the 1989 revolution and finished in the following June, giving the cast a firsthand view of the profound changes that shook the country in those months. Saegebrecht, first seen by U.S. audiences in Percy Adlon’s “Bagdad Cafe,” recalls the first few weeks of shooting with tremendous emotion: “Everyone said to me, ‘Marianne, don’t talk. Be careful--the driver might be working for the secret police.’ They said there were microphones everywhere, maybe even cameras. After a while, you become totally uncomfortable. But I said, well, my words are free. Eventually we all became great friends.”

The film will be released in the United States in October, more than three years after filming began, highlighting the most vocal frustration of the festival: the near impossibility of finding distribution. Many of these issues were overshadowed, in the first year of the festival after the revolution, by the euphoric return of many of the New Wave directors--Milos Forman and Menzel among them. By all accounts, the 1990 festival was a gigantic party as, one after the other, films were shown that had been banned.

Reality has finally settled in over Karlovy Vary in 1992. While the existence of the festival may not be in question, its future form remains very much in question. Though supported by both the Czech and Slovak ministries of culture, as well as several private sources, this year’s organizing body, Etamp Film Production Ltd., was beset by difficulties.

The main difficulties faced by the organizers lie in the collapse of the state-run film industry. In the decade before the revolution, the industry produced an average of 25 films per year, often many more. Directors were paid by the state and required to produce a certain number of films per year. Last year, combined production between the two regions was, by most estimates, in the neighborhood of six films. Of course, among them were the Oscar-nominated “Elementary School,” directed by Jan Sverak and produced at Prague’s famous Barrandov Studios, and “Black Barons,” co-produced by Barrandov and the private Space Films Ltd. This latter played for months in cinemas across the country, cinemas formerly required to show every film produced by the state-run industry.

Denisa Strbova is one of the key advisers to the festival. She is also a buyer of films coming from the former Soviet Union, and often argued with censors. One dispute--over a Georgian film about a dictator who dies and whose body the townspeople keep digging up as unfit for burial--made its way to the national government. The film, seen in the Commonwealth of Independent States, was eventually shown.

None of the existing film laws were revised after the 1989 revolution. This means that, technically, the fledgling production and distribution companies are illegal. It’s a point of humor with most filmmakers here, but it serves to underscore widespread frustration with the government--though nearly everyone readily admits that there are greater problems at hand--and with the general lack of expertise concerning how the film business operates in the West. The largest distributors are still the reorganized state arts agencies, since few others have the appropriate contacts, and even Barrandov has survived only by renting its facilities to foreign productions.

One result of slow privatization is the dominance of American films. “American companies,” said one official, “are profiting from our disorganization.”

“Remember,” says Cerny, “1991 was the first year in which a movie that opens in or Paris may even open here in the same month. It’s exciting to know that ‘Alien c,6 3’ is showing here while it’s being seen in L.A. Also, horror films and films with sexual content were prohibited here. Now there’s a big demand for erotic thrillers. In the summer of 1990, there were lines all the way down Wenceslas Square for ‘Emmanuelle.’ ”

There are signs, however, that people are tiring of the onslaught of action pictures and third-rate horror. The future, Cerny believes, is in comedy, and in preserving the human scale of values that has characterized the best of Czech and Slovak cinema.

Another film at this year’s festival that seemed tailor-made for the times (though it was written in 1985), was director Enrique Gabriel-Lipschutz’s “Krapatchouk.” Shot in Paris in French, the comedy follows two friends, Polni and Tchelovek, who lose the passports they hold to their East European homeland: Pratiavizia. Unable to prove the existence of their country except by singing its rousing national anthem, they wander among the host of homesick expatriates that now fill many of the neighborhoods of the great cities of the world. Many here saw the film as symbolic of the growing frustration with the slowness of change, but also saw hope in its humor and the ingenuity of its heroes.