Czech republic - Lighting up the radar
Theodore Schwinke
28 Nov 2008

Czech documentary film-makers Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda gained international attention and praise from Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore for their 2004 debut feature Czech Dream.

The documentary, in which the two student film-makers created an entire PR campaign for a non-existent supermarket, won several awards including best documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Having now graduated from the Prague Film Academy, the duo are finishing production on a new feature-length documentary, Czech Peace, which this time examines a real campaign - the US's intention to build a radar base in the Czech Republic as part of an international missile-defence shield.

The film-makers believe it is a topic that will resonate globally. "It is a story about Star Wars (the US missile defence shield), the Cold War and the War on Terror, all in one small Czech village," says Klusak.

Unlike the anti-consumerism Czech Dream, Klusak and Remunda insist this time round they are not taking sides. Rather, they want to present the arguments for and against the base.

The pair started shooting without funding and only secured state support from the Czech state film fund while they were filming. They have recently signed a co-production contract with state broadcaster Czech Television. The budget stands presently at about $450,000, with the plan to have a 90-minute film ready for a major festival release in spring.

Taskovski Film is handling world sales, as it did for Czech Dream, which, according to company founder Irena Taskovski, is still making sales four years later (despite only grossing about $200,000 worldwide).

She signed on as executive producer of Czech Peace from the outset and has high expectations for the project, hoping it will sell faster in many of the territories that picked up the first film.

Czech Peace has already registered interest at this month's Doc/Fest in Sheffield, England, and Klusak and Remunda are presenting the project this week at Idfa, the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

Despite its weighty topic, Czech Peace looks set to retain some of the provocative humour of the first film, with several absurdities to keep audiences engaged. Among these are songs composed by opponents and supporters of the radar base, including one sung by the Czech defence minister.

"What is bizarre is this song is a cover version of an old song celebrating (Soviet cosmonaut) Yuri Gagarin during his visit to Prague (in 1961)," says Remunda.

Filip Remunda's Cultural Life

Favourite recent film: Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.

Favourite recent book: The Dance Of Small-Time Demons by Marko Vidojkovic, the story of a troubled Belgrade man during the Kosovo War.

Daily read: Britske listy, a left-leaning Czech-language daily about major political and social issues facing the Czech Republic. "I read this as an alternative to the mainstream media."

Inspirations: "In this film we're working on, I'm inspired by the strange people we meet and the bizarre things they say."

www.screendaily.com

Leipzig's top prize for Rene, FIPRESCI Award for Oblivion
Martin Blaney in Berlin
03 Nov 2008 18:08

Czech filmmaker Helena Trestikova's Rene has received the International Jury's Golden Dove at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.

The story of an outsider of society observed by Trestikova over the course of almost 20 years was also awarded the MDR Film Prize for an outstanding East European documentary.

This is the latest major recognition for Rene which is being handled internationally by London-based Taskovski Films.

Rene was recently named European documentary of the year and awarded the Prix Arte by the European Film Academy. Last week it picked up the Audience Award at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Czech documentary René wins Prix ARTE
Theo Schwinke in Prague
21 October 2008

The European Film Academy has announced that René, by Czech director Helena Trestikova, will receive the 2008 Prix ARTE for documentary film.

The recipient of the award is chosen by an independent jury, which this year was made up of Danish producer Karoline Leth, Moscow Film Festival programme director Kirsi Tykkyläinen, and British producer Alan Hayling.

The film follows the life of René Plasil, a petty criminal and self-styled desperado, in and out of prison even as his country emerges from communism and enters the EU.

"This is a film which tells a powerful story – filmed over 20 years – about an extraordinary character on the edge of society," reads the jury statement. "The jury found its examination of the relationship between subject and filmmaker fascinating and thought-provoking."

René is produced by Katerina Cerna and Pavel Strnad of Negativ. Taskovski Films is handling international sales.

Trestikova has been making films since 1972. Her film Sweet Century was named Best Documentary at Karlovy Vary in 1998.

The Prix ARTE award will be presented during the 21st European Film Awards Ceremony in Copenhagen on Dec 6.

In co-operation with the European cultural channel ARTE, the European Film Academy annually honours an outstanding achievement in documentary filmmaking. Last year's award went to French documentary Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers, from director Rithy Panh.

www.screendaily.com

VARIETY
Bahrtalo!

Boyd Van Hoeij!
Tue., Jul. 15, 2008

(Hungary) An Inforg Studio production, in association with Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduction, Intuit Pictures. (International sales: Taskovski Films, London.) Produced by Andras Muhi. Co-producers, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Markus Glaser, Michel Kitzberger, Wolfgang Wiederhoffer, Sandor Soth. Directed, written by Robert Lakatos.

With: Lorand Boros, Gabor Lajos.

By BOYD VAN HOEIJTwo opportunists test their patience as well as the audience's in the Hungarian oddity "Bahrtalo!" Docu-fiction hybrid from helmer Robert Lakatos, who reportedly met the real-life leads in a bar, is about two traveling friends who are eternally looking for ways to make money, and who both want to have the last word. Pic is refreshingly honest in its warts-and-all portrayal of friendship, though its lack of narrative hooks and genuine comedic sparks will make this a hard sell anywhere.

Lori (Lorand Boros), a Transylvanian Hungarian, and Lali (Gabor Lajos), a Gypsy, buy whatever they can resell for a profit. Despite all their heated arguments, there's a clear, underlying affection between them, even if the friendship never develops into anything warranting the audience's interest. A director like Tony Gatlif might have molded them into a fascinating odd couple, but Lakatos wrings neither drama nor comedy from the duo. Shot over several years, pic feels as aimless as its protags, who wander from Transylvania to Vienna, Egypt and back. Score by Romany band Szaszcsavas suits pic's rambling nature; print caught looked extremely dark in places. Title is Romany for "Good Luck!"

Camera (color, HD-to-35mm), Gyorgy Reder; editor, Agi Mogor, Ferenc Szabo; music, Szaszcsavas Band. Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (East of the West), July 11, 2008. Hungarian, Romany dialogue. Running time: 83 MIN.

www.variety.com

Taskovski Films presents the winner of Europa Cinemas label at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Taskovski Films press release
14 July 2008

Ever wanted to get really drunk, sit on a goose and dance like a dervish? Then follow me ...

Taskovski Films (www.taskovskifilms.com) is proud to announce that the film by Robert Lakatos "Barthalo! (Good Luck!)" was awarded the Europa Cinemas Label prize in Karlovy Vary 2008.

Bahrtalo! is an international coproduction made by Hungarian production company Inforg Studio (www.inforgstudio.hu) together with Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion from Austria and Intuit Pictures from Germany.

This original fiction documentary follows a pair of Hungarians on a journey across Europe all the way to Egypt. Lali, a moustached gypsy, and a bald guy named Lori come from Transylvania and are friends to the end.Though the failures of the charismatic duo have been many and their successesshort-lived, their friendship manages to overcome all obstacles. Encouraged by the director toplay themselves, the actors deal with problems in their own, usually very peculiar way. Hovering on the border between documentary and fiction, the filmalways maintains its creative energy and pure spontaneity.

Bahrtalo! debuted at the Hungarian Film Week in February in the competition section and had its international premiere in the East of the West competition section at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2008.

Taskovski Films is a London based world sales and production company of independent documentary and fiction films, welcoming innovative, playful and risky forms of filmmaking capable ofengaging and surprising audiences around the globe. The company's passion isdiscovering new talent and authorial stories.

www.filmneweurope.com

Last night's TV – The Shutka Book of Records on Channel 4, UK Sam Wollaston, The Guardian
Wednesday June 4, 2008

Ever wanted to get really drunk, sit on a goose and dance like a dervish? Then follow me ...

I've been worrying about where to go on holiday this year. I don't like beaches, or swimming pools, pretty whitewashed villages, bougainvillea, sightseeing, calamari, the sound of crickets. I don't like camping, waterproof clothing, being outside - any of that. I don't like France, Italy, Spain or Scotland - especially Scotland. What I really want to do on holiday is get really drunk and sit on a goose. Then I want to disco dance like a dervish (or, better still, with a dervish) to Who Let the Dogs Out. I want to rob graves and watch young men boxing while off their heads on methadone. I want to stick metal skewers through my cheeks and go vampire-hunting. I want to go to a circumcision and then get even more drunk. And if there's a competition as to who has the most impressive collection of Turkish music cassettes, then that would be the icing on the cake. And now, at last, I've found a place that offers all of the above. It's called Shutka and it's in Macedonia.

You won't find Shutka - Roma capital of the Balkans, possibly the world - in any tourist brochures. I can't even find it on the map. But it looks like a brilliant place. And this, True Stories: The Shutka Book of Records (More4), is a brilliant film. It must have been a difficult pitch, and hats off to whoever had the foresight and imagination to fund it. So you want to make a really long documentary about a Gypsy town that simply zooms in on the lives of several of the inhabitants, most of whom are middle-aged men? Top idea, here's a whole bunch of money.

But hats off mostly to Aleksandar Manic, whose film this is. His device for stringing it all together is a joy: that in this place of superlatives, everyone is king of something. So Uncle Fazli is champion dervish; he can make a cucumber into a living being, or dematerialise you and rematerialise you in America, even if you don't have a visa. There are two people called Muzo, one a champion of poverty, the other of words. Alfonso is champion of sex, Zedo is the champion graverobber. There's some dispute about who is champion of training fighting geese, and also who is champion goose.

The birds train with the boxers and are sat on to make their legs stronger. Uncle Jasher is champion of Turkish music cassettes (he does have 2,614, after all). Even our guide and narrator, Doctor Koljo, who is not afraid to laugh at his own community, is a champion - of fishing.

Everyone is laughing (when they're not fighting): at each other, with each other, on their own. I certainly was, throughout, and that's not something you can often say about a long documentary, with subtitles, about one of the world's poorest and most persecuted peoples. But that is precisely the beauty of this film. It is not about feeling sorry for the Roma, about hand-wringing and heartstring-tugging. It's a celebration - of their culture, humour, spirit, oddities and idiosyncrasies. And about the amazing music they make - the soundtrack to the film is, I imagine, what you'd hear if you simply wandered around Shutka.

Oh, and hats off to one more person: Dominik Miskovsky, director of photography, because it all looks so beautiful. You could pause any moment and have a beautiful still shot of life in Shutka. It does help that these people have the best faces in the world - so much expression. Aleksandar Manic is certainly champion of making memorable television. This was a lovely documentary, a party of a film.

How to get there then? None of the travel agents seem to go. I don't even know where to fly to. Skopje maybe? Got it: I'll get Uncle Fazli the champion dervish to rematerialise me in Shutka. And I have his number; he says it on the programme: Shutka 651825. The international operator says the code for Shutka is 00 389 2 (so it does exist: I was beginning to wonder if the whole thing was an elaborate joke). But when I add Fazli's six digits, I just get a continuous tone. Probably quite lucky. I can't remember how you say rematerialise in Macedonian.

Taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ - June 4, 2008

VARIETY
A Town Called Hermitage
25 April 2008

(Documentary -- Czech Republic) A News & Communications Co. production. (International sales: Taskovski Films, Prague.) Produced by Aleksandar Furtula. Directed, written by Martin Dusek, Ondrej Provaznik.

With: Elisabett Vanova, Tu Tran Anh Nguyen (aka Denisa), Daan Kristel, Volker Heymann, Lubos Stich.

By EDDIE COCKRELLEurope is littered with bucolic hamlets nursing leftover identity crises as a result of post-WWII population shifts, and "A Town Called Hermitage" is one of them. Ethnographic smarts could earn easygoing docu fest berths and tube play, followed by modest ancillary. Pic nabbed the docu prize at the 2007 edition of the Czech Republic's Jihlava nonfiction fest.

Divided into upper and lower regions, Dolni Poustevna ("Hermitage") straddles the Czech-German border and even has a modest customs checkpoint in the middle of town. Helmers' sound idea was to get to know a variety of locals and observe their daily rhythms. Vietnamese teenager "Denisa" is bored silly; elderly Sudeten German Elisabett is regretful; fiftysomething German tourist Volker Heymann comes for the brothels; Dutch native Daan Kristel raises a family off the grid; and Lubos Stich is gregarious frontman for a group of special needs men. "The people who came here after 1945 didn't bring any traditions," sighs Elisabett, and Denisa thinks "it was better in Vietnam than here." Thus, burg is either serene or stifling. Tech credits are trim, with Zoran Marelja's otherworldly score a major plus.

Camera (color), Tomas Novacek, Marek Janda; editors, Provaznik, Matous Outrata; music, Zoran Marelja; sound, Vaclav Flegl, Radim Hladik Jr. Reviewed on DVD, Sydney, April 15, 2008. (In Finale Pilzen Film Festival.) Czech, German, Vietnamese, English dialogue. Running time: 74 MIN.

www.variety.com

Email from 8 September 2007:

Dear Mr Cvitkovic
My name is Lina Pilgaard 34 y.o. from Denmark. I have to thank you and your cast for "Od groba do groba". What a laugh and a cry. And the music is absolutely great :) Hope you'll have big success as a filmmaker.

Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark

Marcela - Variety review, Karlovy Vary Film Festival
(Documentary - Czech Republic)
9 July 2007

An Aerofilms release (in the Czech Republic) of a Negativ production. (International sales: Taskovski Films, London.) Produced by Katerina Cerna, Pavel Strnad, Anna Beckova. Directed, written by Helena Trestikova.

With: Marcela Haverlandova, Ivana Haverlandova, Jiri Haverland.

Muted, respectful and tinged with mystery as it traces 26 years in the life of its title citizen.

Every bit as monumental in their depiction of average subjects aging in front of the camera as Michael Apted's "Up" series, Czech helmer Helena Trestikova's half-dozen "Marriage Etudes" skeins continue to break ground in the long-term docu arena. Muted, respectful and tinged with mystery as it traces 26 years in the life of its title citizen, project offshoot "Marcela" could very well be the pic that moves Trestikova and her work into the international spotlight, with fest berths, arthouse play and ancillary life.

From the moment she marries stuffy-looking Jiri Haverland in 1980, affable 20-year-old equestrienne Marcela Rosol seems to want for two things in the world: a man to love her and an apartment large enough to call home.

Yet life, as John Lennon famously composed at about the same time, "is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Their baby, Ivana, is born in 1981, and shortly thereafter Marcela leaves Jiri, apparently due in part to a mutual dislike of their mothers-in-law. A messy divorce, the first of many hospital stays and an ill-advised reconciliation later, Jiri is gone for good.

Later, on the eve of the new millennium, with a developmentally challenged son, Tomas, by a never-seen suitor, Marcela is still looking for a good man and a larger flat. Struggling with Tomas' care and the lack of solid work for her and the now-grown Ivana, she takes comfort in a hinted-at circle of friends who relax listening to country music.

Ivana is found dead under suspicious circumstances on the way home from work in late 2005, and this plunges Marcela into despair. Czech tube airings of her story lead to offscreen donations and shows of support -- including, incredibly enough, a phone stalker. "Why must it always happen to me?" Marcela wonders of her relentless misfortune.

Yet through these travails, she doggedly refuses to throw in the towel. "We must live the kind of life we won't be ashamed of," she says at one point during the years, though she continues to wonder, "Why are we here, what's the point of living?"

Like most people, Marcela is a contradiction, and there are as many ways to interpret her choices as there are eyes to see them. Ultimately, she comes off as that greatest of Czech vernacular compliments, "a fighter."

"I rather listen than talk," says Trestikova, who can be glimpsed helping Marcela after she faints while placing Ivana's ashes in a columbarium. This is a succinct description of her confident helming style, blending Frederick Wiseman's cool impartiality and the passionate social profiling of Barbara Kopple.

Tech work is fluid and seamless. Pic won the feature docu prize at the Plzen fest for local product.

Camera (color/B&W), Jan Malir, Miroslav Soucek, Vlastimil Hamernik; editors, Alois Fisarek, Lenka Polesna, Zdenek Patocka; sound (Dolby Digital), Zbynek Mikulik, Petr Provaznik, Jan Valach. Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Czech Films 2006-2007), July 6, 2007. Running time: 81 MIN.

EDDIE COCKRELL
Taken from Variety review, Karlovy Vary Film Festival - 9 July 2007

To order a screener, please email: info@taskovskifilms.com

Czech Dream is first Czech documentary distributed in USA
15 June 2007

New York, June 14 (CTK) - Controversial film Czech Dream on a fictitious supermarket directed by Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda will be the first Czech documentary to be released in the U.S. distribution network, Remunda told CTK before Friday's distribution premiere of the documentary in New York.

A total of 22 Czech feature films have been released in U.S. cinemas in the past 10 years. Czech Dream has already been shown in New York, and it won one of the main awards for documentary films at the San Francisco international film festival in 2005. The film has also been positively reviewed in the Timeout and Village Voice journals and in New York Magazine.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York this week announced to the film-makers that it would buy the film for its permanent cinematographic collection. Americans have more sensitively perceived the relation between politics and advertisement in the film than the Czech audience, Remunda told.

"The interconnection between marketing and politics has been broadly discussed in the USA. Someone even used the comparison that Czech Dream is for Americans something like mass destruction weapons in Iraq. The government threatens with them and justified the attack on Iraq by them, however the weapons were not found there. So it was also such a media fiasco," Remunda noted.

The film is based on mystification about the opening of a new super supermarket chain ironically called "Czech Dream" with super-cheap goods. Using very convincing professional ads, the film-makers persuaded several hundred shoppers to gather for the shop opening and shot their reactions before and after they found out they were grossly lured by the massive advertising campaign.

Discussions about the film in the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Serbia rather concerned such topics as the transition to capitalism and market economy and the rising consumerism, Remunda said. "These topics are also being debated in the USA, but for Americans the role of the media in democracy and their use for gaining 'political points' or for manipulating public opinion play a very important role," Remunda added.

Americans have also expressed different opinions about mystification as a method on which the documentary is based. Remunda recalls that the irony and specific humour in the film was not easily comprehensible for some U.S. spectators.

Czech Dream has been released in cinemas in the neighbouring Slovakia, in Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and in Slovenia. The film, represented in the USA by SchwarzSmith of independent distributor Irena Kovarova from New York and British Taskovski Films, will be shown in the IFC Center in New York for a week.

"If the film scores success, other cinemas and other cities have been preliminarily planned - for instance in Seattle, Hartford and Columbus," Kovarova told CTK.

Prague Daily Monitor /ČTK/
Taken from Czech News Agency (ČTK) - 15 June 2007

Film New Europe: Newcomer Taskovski Films aims for another hit
6 June 2007

British-Czech Taskovski Films, a relative newcomer on the Czech market, is aiming for another hit with the imminent release of Rules of Lies, already a triple prize winner.

The film, budgeted at $700,000 (€$520,000), won an Audience Award at the recent Pilsen film festival in April, and also captured both a Czech Lion for best script and a "Kristian," the Czech critics' prize for most remarkable film of 2006. It tells the stories of 12 people who are placed in a treatment centre away from the civilised world as the try to untangle their complicated pasts.

Taskovski started international exposure of the film at the Marche du Film in Cannes in May. Rules of Lies will be also shown at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, which runs from June 29 to July 7. The film has been sold to several European countries including Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Italy. It will also be shown on Czech and Slovak HBO.

Taskovski Films was founded in 2003 to produce and sell independent fare from Central and Eastern Europe. Its first release was a smash hit: the documentary Czech Dream (2004) made by two film school students, Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda. Czech Dream, about the launch of a virtual dime store in Prague preceded by a virtual PR campaign, turned out to be one of the most successful Czech films abroad. It was sold to 15 European countries and opens this month in the U.S.

Though barely four years old, Taskovski already has a cache of 25 films, including the Slovenian film Gravehopping by Jan Cvitkovic. Gravehopping was shown at Cannes this year. The company list also includes the Czech documentary The Shutka Book of Records (2005) made by the Prague-based Serb Aleksander Manic, about the bittersweet life of a Romany community living near Skopje, Macedonia. Both films were sold to 12 countries.

Taskovski also represents Marcela by the renowned Czech documentary maker Helena Trestikova. Marcela won the main prize at the Pilsen festival in April.

Radovan Holub
Link

Variety review, Beyond the Forest - Einst suesse Heimat
6 June 2007

A Golden Girls Filmproduktion prod. Produced by Arash, Gerald Igor Hauzenberger, Geza Horvat. Directed, written by Gerald Igor Hauzenberger.

With: Johann Schuff, Maria Huber, Hilda Fielk.

The nostalgic flavor of Gerald Igor Hauzenberger's lyrically expressive docu "Beyond the Forest" is better served by its original title, "A Once Sweet Homeland," than by the literal English-language translation of Transylvania. Almost anthropological in spirit if it wasn't for Hauzenberger's painterly compositions, the docu focuses on a time when this patch of Romania was once a proud Germanic enclave. "Forest" may trouble those wanting a less-objective take on unapologetically expressed racism, but the impartial stance better suits this important record of a vanishing world. Fests should take note.

Hauzenberger explored Teutonic culture in Transylvania for six years, settling on two unacquainted relics of the disappearing community for his straightforward vision. Johann Schuff, descended from Saxon settlers, is the philosophical one, bitter and self-pitying in recounting his life on the losing side of WWII. Maria Huber, of Landler stock, regrets the loss of community, but despite five years in a Soviet gulag following the War, her home-centric outlook betrays tiredness more than melancholy. Old school social Darwinists, both subjects welcome approaching mortality. Hauzenberger's coolly observational eye is backed by bucolic lensing.

Camera (color), Dominik Spritzendorfer, Marco F. Zimprich, Hauzenberger; editor, Michael Palm, Hauzenberger; music, Probstdorfer Blaskapelle; sound, Spritzendorfer, Martin Zinggl; sound design, Nina Slatosch. Reviewed on DVD in Rome, Italy, Feb. 20, 2007. (In Rotterdam Film Festival -- Cinema of the World.) Original title: Einst suesse Heimat. Running time: 75 MIN

Jay Weissberg

To order a screener, please email: info@taskovskifilms.com

Rules of Lies - Pravidla Lzi
(Czech Republic)
7 May 2007

A Radim Prochazka production. Produced by Prochazka. Directed, written by Robert Sedlacek.

With: Jiri Langmajer, David Svehlik, Martin Stransky, Martin Trnavsky, Klara Issova, Igor Chmela, Jan Budar, Petra Jungmanova.

A dozen recovering addicts deal with their demons and deceit in the densely textured, confidently thesped drama "Rules of Lies." Winner of two prizes, including an aud award, at the recent Finale Plzen fest, pic has has already been announced for the East of the West competish section at Karlovy Vary. Modest local biz following a late 2006 preem in a crowded holiday marketplace won't impede fest action abroad, limited arthouse exposure and decent ancillary.

In a rambling rural farmhouse, three counselors (including "Grandhotel" ingenue Klara Issova) are overseeing 11 volunteer patients on the long road to recovery. At the story's opening, they're joined by Roman (David Svehlik), a successful small-businessman whose seven-year addiction to cocaine and crystal meth has landed him in rehab.

The group is polite but stern at first, forcing him into the ritual of "unlocking the pond" by jumping in -- no mean feat in the dead of winter. But soon fissures begin to show in the veneer of civility. Though they're asked repeatedly if they know one another from the outside, there's a whiff of unfinished business between Roman and the manipulative Milan (Jiri Langmajer).

As time progresses, the web of verbal deceit is punctured by the memory of and fallout from a previous encounter, sparked by something dimly remembered by ex-junkie Tom (Igor Chmela).

Debuting writer-director Robert Sedlacek creates a tangible sense of foreboding among these damaged individuals. More noteworthy is his determined avoidance of sensationalism; from the opening frames, there's a sense that Sedlacek the writer will take his time creating these characters, and the film as a whole is better for it. Purposely ambiguous wrap-up may not be to everyone's taste, but is in keeping with the idea that life is full of variables.

Ensemble perfs are on the mark, with Langmajer in particular tapping into an intense level of menace. Tech credits are discreetly pro.

Camera (color), Petr Koblovsky; editor, Matous Outrata; music, Tomas Kympl; production designer, Tomas Chlud; costume designer, Chlud; sound (Dolby Digital), Martin Vecera. Reviewed on DVD, Sydney, April 30, 2007. (In Finale Plzen, Karlovy Vary film festivals.) Running time: 119 MIN.

Eddie Cockrell

Variety review, Black Nights Film Festival
The Art Of Selling - Muumise Kunst
2 December 2006

A Kuukulgur Film Ou, Making Movies Oy production, in association with YLE FST, VRPO, DR TV, ETV, LRT, with the support of the Estonian Film Foundation, Estonian Culture Endowment, Finnish Film Foundation. (International sales: Taskovski Films, Prague.) Produced by Jaak Kilmi, Kaarle Aho. Directed, written by Andres Maimik, Jaak Kilmi.

With: Peep Vain, Raigo Saariste, Mare Pannel. (Estonian, English dialogue)

Gently revealing docu "The Art of Selling" depicts three Estonian salespeople -- two amateurs and one pro -- trying to make a few fast bucks (or rather, a few fast krooni, the Estonian national currency). Although originally made for TV, this digitally shot effort by Eesti talents Andres Maimik ("Kurat tuleb sauna") and Jaak Kilmi ("Revolution of Pigs") is rich enough in human interest and tongue-in-cheek humor to qualify pic for fest airings. "Art," however, will be a harder sell to theatrical distribs outside the Baltics and Scandinavia.

Made up of three separate but interwoven stories and made over the course of a year or so, docu tracks the fortunes of a troika of contrasting personalities.

Motivational speaker Peep Vain is far and away the most successful of the lot. Although born and raised in Estonia, he learned the shiller's arts by working for Southwestern, the long-established, U.S.-based door-to-door textbook company that recently began vigorously recruiting in the Baltics. Now the not-inaptly-named Vain is back on home turf -- equipped with the requisite wireless microphone, PowerPoint slides and American-style can-do attitude -- to teach the locals how to make it in the biz world.

The camera picks two people, Raigo Saariste and Mare Pannel, who've paid to hear Vain's speil. Laidback college student Raigo decides to join Southwestern himself, thinking it might be one way to learn English and have a Stateside summer vacation. However, his poor salesmanship and manifest lack of enthusiasm for his employer's products make for a bumpy ride. In the pic's latter half, when Raigo finally makes it to Southwestern's headquarters in Tennessee for training, the very fact that he's being filmed by a camera crew gets him in a whole heap of trouble.

Provincial housewife Mare, meanwhile, tries her hand at selling Tupperware. Like Raigo, she shows little aptitude for sales, but she does become a passionate consumer of a newly imported brand of fundamentalist Christianity, eventually leaving Tupperware to devote herself full-time to her church.

Pic is hardly in the same league as Albert and David Maysles' sublime 1969 docu classic "Salesman," but it, too, focuses substantially on lives of quiet desperation. Both Raigo and Mare in particular come across as fantasists, seduced by the new consumer culture that has only recently invaded Estonia. Vain is more savvy and sharkish, but helmers Maimik and Kilmi nevertheless treat him with even-handed sympathy, and catch him looking positively vulnerable as he psyches himself up before taking to the stage.

Pic's material exists in both feature-length and one-hour cuts; version caught was the feature-length one, which flows nicely. Even so, low budget outs itself in weak sound quality and wobbly camerawork.

Camera (color, DV), Kilmi, Maimik, Mart Taniel; editor, Jan-Erik Nogisto; sound, Kilmi, Maimik, Taniel. Reviewed on DVD, Tallinn, Estonia, Dec. 2, 2006. (In Black Nights Film Festival.) Running time: 86 MIN.

Leslie Felperin
Link

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Tomorrow Morning - Sutra Ujutru
(Serbia-Montenegro)
7 July 2006

A Zillion Film production, in association with the Serbian Ministry of Culture, the City of Belgrade. Produced by Lazar Ristovski. Directed by Oleg Novkovic. Screenplay, Milena Markovic.

With: Uliks Fehmiu, Nebojsa Glogovac, Nada Sargin, Lazar Ristovski, Ljubomir Bandovic, Radmila Tomovic, Danica Ristovski, Milos Vlalukin, Ana Markovic, Nebojsa Ilic, Jelena Djokic, Milos Andjelkovic, Branko Cvejic, Elizabeta Djorevska, Nada Blam, Renata Ulmanski, Miroljub Leso. (Serbian dialogue.)

An emigre's return to Belgrade to get married becomes the occasion for several emotionally fraught and drunken reunions in "Tomorrow Morning," Serbian helmer and docmaker Oleg Novkovic's ("Why Have You Left Me") third fictional feature. Script set up and docu-style handheld look rep nothing new, but pic offers a credible portrait in miniature of a lost generation and a culture shaped by a civil war which is never directly mentioned here. Meaty perfs by the ensemble and solid helming should ensure a fest career dawns for "Morning," even if sales prospects look iffy.

After 12 years of working in the computer business in Canada, Nele (Uliks Fehmiu) returns to the rundown Belgrade housing project where he grew up. He plans to marry Maya (Ana Markovic), who is about 10 years younger than he is, but first he wants to reconnect with his old friends and family, who he left behind.

The women generally give Nele a warmer reception than the men, especially his put-upon mother (Danica Ristovski), his sexy but alcoholic ex-girlfriend Sasha (Nada Sargin), and another former flame, Ceca (Radmila Tomovic). Ceca is now married to Nele's old friend Bure (Ljubomir Bandovic), who envies Nele's popularity with the femmes. More friendly is former heroin-addict Mare (Nebojsa Glogovac), who runs a local bar.

In the old days, everyone was shagging everyone in this tight-knit circle whose members spent most of their time taking drugs, drinking and just hanging out. Nothing much has changed.

Nele, suffering from a classic case of exile guilt -- especially in regard to his best friend Sima (Milos Vlalukin) who committed suicide after he left -- is quickly drawn back into the routine.

Screenwriter Milena Markovic, who collaborated with helmer Novkovic on short docu "The Miner's Opera," has a background in legit, which shows here, particularly in the somewhat stagy set piece scenes. Still, pic offers a spot-on rendering of this grungy milieu without sentimentality, although some auds may find main characters less than sympathetic.

Vital info about the backstory is withheld consistently, such as why Sima committed suicide or why Nele's father (eminent Serbian thesp Lazar Ristovski, from "Underground"), is so hostile toward his own son. But, such obliqueness adds a realistic feel.

Thesp ensemble members play off each other nicely, and project an impressive amount of feeling with their modest portions of dialogue. Femme thesps are especially good.

Tech package is par for low-budget course, with lensing favoring long takes, and editing including abrupt cuts that add an edgy tone.

Camera (color, HD-to-35mm), Miladin Èolakovic; editor, Lazar Predojev; music, Miroslav Mitrasinovic; production designer, Nevena Mijuskovic; sound (Dolby Digital), Dejan Pekovic. Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (East of the West), July 2, 2006. Running time: 84 MIN.

Leslie Felperin

Variety: Helmers bring immigrant vision to Euro pix
Abu Assad working on 'Cairo,' Traidia to make 'Bottles'
18 December 2005

AMSTERDAM -- The history of film in Hollywood has been written, in part, by some of its greatest talent crossing over from Europe. Now, a small but significant strand of filmmakers, coming out of the shifting populations and immigrant cultures of Europe, are beginning to make important contributions to the Euro film industry.

The experience of being trapped between two cultures may be a common one, but some of these filmers are providing new visions that are anything but common.

Palestinian-born Dutch director Hany Abu Assad is now lensing his sixth pic, "L.A. Cairo." The Arab-American film about the American dream is being produced by Los Angeles- based outfit Dviant Pictures.

"L.A. Cairo" follows on the heels of multiple award winner and Palestinian Oscar nominee "Paradise Now," about the last 48 hours of a suicide bomber. Says Abu Assad, "I was born to a people that have lost their land. When that happens, you have only the history, the stories to tell. If the stories are extreme, it is because the experiences have been extreme."

Abu Assad's experiences continue to be extreme. Shooting "Paradise Now" in violence-torn Nablus, his cast and crew faced threats to their lives, and his locations manager was kidnapped.

Algerian-born Dutch lenser Karim Traidia, winner of the Holland's Golden Calf award for "Polish Bride," is now financing his fourth film, "The Journey of the Empty Bottles," a story about an Iranian political refugee's search for identity.

Traidia says he strongly identified with the main character in the Kader Abdollah story. "I became Dutch, but it cost me a lot of pain and sacrifice before I could accept it."

He adds, however, fears of cultural dilution are very real and pervasive in Europe today. "Everyone is being hit by Europeanization and globalization and has a fear of losing their identity."

The experience of being different can nourish creativity and in some cases, provide an objectivity that a native helmer might not have.

Polish-born Pawel Pawlikovski, who came to the U.K. as a teenager, notes, "Everything looks more ambiguous, absurd, funny and threatening, sometimes more beautiful and attractive than it would if you understand the ins and the outs. You observe more intensely and spend more time in your own head."

For Jan Fleischer, former Czech new wave filmer, now a lecturer in scriptwriting at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the U.K., the experience of filming under communism was a definitive plus for creativity. "Under censorship, you learn to talk in parable and metaphor," says Fleischer, who, blacklisted, left the Czech Republic two days before the regime collapsed, to take up his post in the U.K. "Being given a straightjacket sometimes makes you more inventive."

The creative contributions of film directors coming out of today's Eastern camp is being tapped by Taskovski Films, which has produced and is representing "Czech Dream," a satirical docu-jab at modern capitalism directed by Vit Klusak & Filip Remunda, already sold to some 15 territories in Europe

The London-based company was founded by Irena Taskovski, who fled to the Czech Republic at the age of 17 following the outbreak of the war in her native Bosnia.

Taskovski believes a major creative wind is coming out of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, reasons her company has moved into sales, not only for "Czech Dream," but for a handful of other pics, among them award-winning lenser Jan Cvitkovik's "Gravehopping" and Czech helmer Aleksander Manic's "The Shutka Book of Records." Company is getting significant interest on the slate of pics from the U.S., she says.

Scandinavian wave

Scandinavia is becoming a major hotbed for new first- or second-generation immigrant helmers, with box office numbers bolstering new sales expectations. Films like Khalid Hussain's "Import Export" and Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen's film "Izzat," about Pakistani gangsters in Norway, have delivered beyond expectations at the box office, says Jan Eric Holst, exec director of the international department at the Norwegian Film Industry.

Lebanese-born Swedish lenser Josef Fares' third pic, "Zozo," failed to bring in the wild box office his comedies "Kops" and "Jalla Jalla" did in Sweden, but at 300,000, the numbers for the partially autobiographical drama were respectable. Iranian born Swedish lenser Reza Bagher's "Popular Music" also came close to 300,000.

Sonet Film has picked up Amir Chamdin's debut feature film "God Willing," a romantic tale set for release next March about the love between a Syrian man and a Finnish woman, both living in Stockholm. Chamdin, known for cranking out musicvids and a member of the popular band Infinite Mass, says Swedish films continue to stereotype, as does the society at large. Local interest in "God Willing" should be strong, as Cardigan's singer Nina Persson plays the lead.

Several of these filmmakers have been quite successful already -- Trust Film Sales reports Fares' "Zozo" sold to 26 territories, "Jalla Jalla" to more than 65 and "Kops" to some 55.

U.K. Film Council European executive Jan-Jacob Lousberg points to the successes of Turkish-born German director Feta Akim and Turkish born Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek, calling Ozpetek's "Facing Windows" one of the most successful Italian films of all time.

Indeed, "Facing Windows" reported $14 million in box office, the third-biggest take in Italy in 2003, and sold to 32 territories. Abu Assad's "Paradise Now" at last count, sold to 52 territories.

France's second-gen lenser Abdel Kechiche, who last year picked up four Cesar's for his film "L'Esquive" (The Game of Love and Chance) is now at work on another pic for Pathe, while Georgian born French lenser Gela Babluani's pic "Tsameti" will have its U.K. release in January.

But sales execs agree it's not about a helmer's origin. "It's irrelevant who it is made by and where it comes from. All the decisions we make are based on the quality of the film and whether we liked it," says Artificial Eye's Robert Beeson.

Marlene Edmunds

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Screen International: Gravehopping Review
Nov 29th 2005

A darkly comic curio, the second film from Bread And Milk director Jan Cvitkovic has been flying the festival flag for Slovenia ever since its debut at San Sebastian - where it picked up the New Directors Award - and has since won best film prizes at Cottbus and Turin.

Revolving around a funeral speaker, played with perfect deadpan comic resignation by Gregor Balkovic, Gravehopping is a Balkan black comedy – with most of the comedy in the first part and most of the black in the second.

The downbeat village surrealism of the film’s rural Slovenian setting is reminiscent of Kusturica and Jiri Menzel, but the savage darkness that gradually clouds the film’s sense of humour, and its main character’s philosophical resilience to the slings and arrows of fate, has much more in common with the 1960s ‘Black Wave’ associated with Yugoslav directors like Zivojin Pavlovic.

It’s a mark of Cvitkovic’s ability in making us care about these provincial misfits that the film’s uneven tonal structure does not send it off the tracks, though many will come out of the cinema feeling more cheated than shocked by the director’s tragic final turn: it’s as if he loses faith at the last moment in the power of comedy to deliver psychological incisiveness or philosophical depth.

It has been picked up by Alta Films in Spain and is likely to generate some interest in other territories with mature arthouse markets. Producers looking for leftfield material suitable for a remake are also advised to have a look.

In one sense Gravehopping is a buddy movie – the buddies being hangdog Pero, who is paid to give graveside orations at the funerals of complete strangers – and his lanky best friend Shooki (Drago Milnovic), a car mechanic who looks like a Balkan John the Baptist.

Pero is a jobless idler whose one real talent is to ad-lib metaphysical pronouncements like “not everyone is born – but everyone dies”. At home, he’s caught uneasily between a widowed grandfather (Brane Grubar) who keeps trying and failing to commit suicide in ever-more inventive ways, and a sister, Vilma (Natasa Matjasec), who is hopelessly infatuated with her abusive, absentee husband.

Shooki’s main love interest is Pero’s other sister, the deaf-and-dumb Ida (Sonia Savic), an unfettered nature sprite whose sentimental, Chaplinesque portrayal becomes more than a little irritating. Pero’s own amorous thoughts tend towards peppy Renata (Moica Fatur) – who is soon revealed to be darker than she appears, damaged by her abusive, bullying father.

In fact few of the inhabitants of this sleepy rural village, with its seasonal fairs and harvests, are what they seem; behind the Little House On The Prairie facade, there’s an ugly series of rooms straight out of Deliverance.

A good slice of the comic effect is carried by Balkovic’s sure sense of comic timbre and timing – as in a scene where Pero repeats the asinine sample sentences of an audio English course. There is also a canny sprinkling of comic cultural references that will entertain international audiences – like a version of disco classic I Will Survive played by a local weddings and funerals band; or a scene in which Shooki is inspired to put blades on the wheels of his bubble car after watching a scene from 1960s classic Maciste, l’eroe più grande del mondo.
After first-act crises like Vilma’s shaky marriage are resolved, there are signals that the film is moving into darker, more portentous waters. But the point of no return still comes as a shock: a brutal rape scene that has the courage, or the folly, to overturn the audience’s expectations of how this hitherto gentle metaphysical romp is going to end. The bucolic landscape that has filled up the cinemascope format turns menacing, and Pero’s fortune-cookie sermons on death are suddenly revealed to be both more meaningful than we (or he) had realised – but also ultimately useless.

What grates is not so much this gear shift into tragedy, as the feeling that a film notable up to now for its lightness of touch has started to take itself a little too seriously for its own good.

Lee Marshall
Taken from Screen International - Nov. 29th 2005

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Asthetica Magazine: Czech Dream Review
Nov 25th 2005

Does modern life seems increasingly shallow and meaningless?

Do corporations plague your every attempt to be ‘someone who buys things’ and not ‘a consumer’? If you find yourself increasingly screaming at adverts ‘It’s all lies!’ then Czech Dream is the absolute must-see movie for you.

Czech Dream was made by two penniless film students, Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda. It is a documentary that comes across as an expensive Trigger Happy TV-style practical joke, commenting on how capitalism has gone mad in Europe. Spurred on by the modern obsession with hypermarkets in the Czech Republic, our heroes decided to stage an enormous ad campaign for a hypermarket to end all hypermarkets. Great prices, quality products, and a mystery location revealed at the last minute… sounds great? The only problem is, there is no hypermarket. Just some scaffolding in a meadow with a beautiful logo smeared across it. Czech Dream is a film that knowingly unravels itself with very little bluff and bluster, instead realising the potential for the experiment to work its magic.

The genius of Czech Dream is the way that the film is constructed to make every part of the process from logo design to ad campaigns utterly rivetting and revelling in the squirm worthy feeling that results from the audience ‘being in’ on the joke. One priceless moment is when the ad guys realise that the hypermarket is a scam. This occurs after they thought of the slogan ‘don’t go there’ and the filmmakers mirth reveals all. ‘We don’t lie in advertising’ states one of them, whilst the other wrestles with his conscience for approximately ten minutes of screen time before letting his ego justify the whole process and cheerfully carries on.

The poignancy of the final reel, where the poor attendees to this non-event finally realise what’s going on, is as much a revelation as it is comedy heaven. Some are shocked, some are tickled, all have an opinion.

This is the anti-Jackass, a cynical, intelligent social experiment that says more in 87 minutes than most news programmes and satires have tried in years. And when it’s all over, will everyone have learned their lesson, ignore the banners and ad campaigns telling them where to go and what to buy? To quote the filmmakers, ‘we’ll see’.

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Gravehopping and Clouds of Yesterday share honours at Turin
Nov 20th 2005

Gravehopping shares  the Best Feature Award and  wins the Holden School Award for Best Screenplay.

Slovenian film Gravehopping shared top honours at the 2005 Torino Film Festival with Clouds of Yesterday, a nostalgia-soaked paean to the silent film era which represents the feature directing debut of Japanese actor and composer Tsubokawa Takushi.

The Torino best feature award for Gravehopping continued the triumphal festival march of Jan Cvitkovic's choral black comedy, which picked up the Altadis – New Director's Award at San Sebastian and also bagged the top prize at the Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema.

The Special Jury Prize went to Robinson Devor's Police Beat, a US indie feature which had previously aired at Sundance and Edinburgh, while Singaporean director Eric Khoo won the Best Director award for Be With Me, which is one of only three non-US contenders for the Non-European Film of the Year award at this year's EFAs in Berlin.

Two Italian documentaries shared the Persol Doc 2005 award – Il Canto di Nuovi Emigrati, a homage to Calabrian poet Franco Costabile by directing duo Felice D'Agostino and Arturo Lavorato; and Balordi, German director Mirjiam Kubescha's portrait of the southern Italian inmates and warders of Volterra high security prison.

Unrepentantly cineaste, Turin is a festival whose real gems are to be found more often in the retrospectives and sidebars than in the main competition. And this year's event was no exception: highlights included the first part of a complete Claude Chabrol survey which will continue next year; a Walter Hill retrospective; and a focus on the cinema of the Philippines, centring on the work of mould-breaking director Lino Brocka and his present-day disciple, Lav Diaz…. (cont)

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Gravehopping, winner of Cottbus
Nov 13th 2005

On the 15th festival of EasternEuropean Cinema in Cottbus Jan Cvitkovic recived Main Prize for Best Film. Beside this GRAVEHOPPING recived also award for best film from Ecumencial Jury.

Members of festival Jury were german director Andreas Dresen, hungarian actress Dorka Gryllus, polish scriptwritter Maciej Karpinski, croatian and french producer Cedomir Kolar and Nadia Turincev from Russia. Festival jury unanimosly decided to give award to Gravehopping. In explantaion they wrote:

'From the beginning to the end, from birth to death, from laugher to crying, from love to murder, this film takes us on a risky jurney, demanding courage from both the filmmaker and the viewer. It forces us to look back at the experiences of our life and ask: are we actors in a comedy or a drama? It asks uneasy questions, makes us lough in apparently serious moments – and in all that doesn't loose its balance, skillfully avoiding all traps of such an adventure. It owes it to the outstanding actors, witty dialogues full of absurd and laconic humour. As one of its characters would put it, this film does not say 'eventually', it goes its own way until a bitter end, full of dramatic power and hope. The Jury unanimously awarded the main Prize for the Best Film to Gravehopping, Slovenia.'

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SOURCE – ZDROJ- by Martin Marecek wins the Audience and Best Czech Film award at Jihlava Documentary Film Festival 2005.
Oct 30th 2005

This year’s 9th International Festival of Documentary Films in Jihlava took place from Oct. 25 to Oct. 30, as a film event opened to all forms of documentary cinematography with a contest of Central European Documentary Films Between the Seas and contest of Czech Documentary Films Czech Joy. J

This year is one of the most successful in history. Today the International Festival OF Documentary Films (www.dokument-festival.cz) is one of the biggest festivals of authorial documentary films in Central Europe. In addition to its consistent mission of showing Czech and worldwide documentary films, the festival goes beyond its limits in different directions.

Czech Joy  –  contest of czech documetary films

The Jury
Jasný Vojtech, Czech Republic/USA
Klusák Vít, Czech Republic
Král Petr, Czech Republic
Remunda Filip, Czech Republic
Ryšavý Martin, Czech Republic
Reynková Veronika, Czech Republic

Award for the Best Czech Documentary Film 2005

Source Czech Republic, 2005
Director: Martin Marecek
Documentary filmmaker Martin Marecek´s and activist Martin Skalský´s film opens with an animated sequence that illustrates in shorthand the road from the full fuel tank to the real price of oil in the mining fields of Baku. Contemporary Azerbaijan is implicitly undemocratic, with a strong presidential systém and clan mentality, exploited by Western corporations. Looking at the broader context, the film explores the project of oil pipelines supported by the World Bank.

Other awards presented at the Festival

Audience Award
Source Czech Republic, 2005
Director: Martin Marecek

Source Czech Republic, 2005
Director: Martin Marecek

In a shifty way but serious, in a crafty journalist way, in a successful filmic way and in a Schwejk manner, the team from Prague goes to look for tracks on the notorious and famous oil fields of Baku in Azerbaidshan. Presumably naïve and unknowing and partly with a hidden camera he succeeds in uncovering and presenting the background and interrelations of a whole network of corruption, greed for profit and abuse of power. This way, a thrilling, entertaining, stirring and courageous documentary film was created, which proves how ignorant and shameless local and international oil tycoons accept and condone ecological catastrophe and the bitter poverty of the population in the interest of their maximum profit. The life in the heatedly disputed oil fields of the former Soviet Union has been mercilessly conquered by the capitalist monopolies. But the film makers also show the human beings who fight for their country and their dignity.

All participants prove that they know how to handle the film tools and thus, "Source" joins the well-known, highly praised tradition of Czech documentary film makers.

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Gravehopping wins Best Central & East European Film (among other 20) in Warsaw Film Festival
Oct. 17th 2005

Balkan cinema was the big winner at this year's Warsaw International FilmFest (Oct 7-16) taking home three of the top prizes.

 The International Jury headed by Polish-born UK director Pawel Pawlikowski gave the Nescafe Grand Prix for Best Film in the "New Films, New Directors" international competition to Croatian filmmaker Ognjen Svilicic's comic drama Sorry For Kung Fu (Oprosti Za Kung Fu), while Warsaw's first ever FIPRESCI Jury gave their International Critics Prize to Sarajevo-born Srdjan Koljevic's road movie Red Coloured Grey Truck (Sivi Kamion Crvene Boje).

The international buyers and festival programmers participating in the first CentEast Warsaw Screenings voted for San Sebastian winner Gravehopping (Odgrobadogroba) by Slovenia's Jan Cvitkovic as the best film among the 20 Central and East European titles showcased at the new event.

Meanwhile, the International Jury chose Danish first-time filmmaker Jacob Thuesen's Accused (Anklaget) as the winner of the Cinemax Award for Best Screenplay, while the CentEast delegates voted for two productions by women filmmakers - I Am (Jestem) by Dorota Kedzierzawska and It's Me Now (Teraz Ja) by  Anna Jadowska - to share the honour of Best Polish Film at the Screenings.

The CentEast - Warsaw Screenings was attended by such international industry figures as Jerome Paillard of Cannes' Marche du Film, Sonja Heinen of the Berlinale Co-Production Market, CineMart's Bianca Taal as well as producers, distributors and festival programmers from Central and Eastern Europe.

The list of international guests at this year's edition of the FilmFest included Wim Wenders, Sir Alan Parker, Bent Hamer, Paul Cox, and screenwriting guru Syd Field.

Martin Blaney
Taken from Screen Daily - Oct. 16th 2005

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Source wins two awards in one week
Oct. 16th 2005

The MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) award for excellent Eastern European documentary film at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, 2005.
The international jury prize & Award  from the Czech Ministry of Environment at the Ekofilm festival in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic , 2005.

A documentary film about the social and environmental implications of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in Azerbaijan was awarded prizes at two prestigious film festivals this weekend.

“Source” (Zdroj), a joint Bionaut- CEE Bankwatch Network production shot by Czech director Martin Marecek, received the international jury prize and an award from the Czech Ministry of Environment at the Ekofilm festival in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic. Source  was also awarded the prize for outstanding East European documentary film at the International Leipzig Festival for documentary and animated film.

The judges in Leipzig commented that Maracek “succeeds in uncovering and presenting the background and interrelations of a whole network of corruption, greed for profit and abuse of power … a thrilling, entertaining, stirring and courageous documentary film has been created, which proves how ignorant and shameless local and international oil tycoons accept and condone ecological catastrophe and the bitter poverty of the population in the interest of their profit maximizing”.

The 75 minute documentary presents unique footage of human rights violations of BTC pipeline affected villagers in Azerbaijan, and also features interviews with BP officials, local state authorities, and local NGOs. The BTC pipeline, backed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, continues to be dogged by controversy and is due to export Caspian oil to western markets in December this year.

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Gravehopping wins the Altadis - New Directors Award
Sept. 25th 2005

Gravehopping wins the Altadis -New Directors Award at the 53rd edition of Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Gravehopping was one of the 24 films competing for the Altadis-New Director's Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

The ALTADIS-NEW DIRECTORS AWARD JURY of the 53rd Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival has decided to grant the ALTADIS-NEW DIRECTORS AWARD to the film:

ODGROBADOGROBA (GRAVEHOPPING) directed by Jan Cvitkovic (Slovenia) for the intelligent combination of comedy and drama through characters that constantly surprise us in a film full of vitality.

A specially formed international jury consisting of the following members; (Vicnzo Bugno, Marian Fernandez Pascal, Francisco Hoyos, Orlando Mora, Jerome Paillard, Melanie Tebb, jan Vandierendonck) is charged with granting the Altadis-New Directors Award of the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival. The largest monetary prize given in any festival, this 90,000 Euros (about 110,000 dollars) is shared by the winning film's producer and director. The first or second features of directors participating in the Official Section or Zabaltegi are eligible whenever the films have not already been screened in any other festival.

The objective of the Altadis-New Directors Award is to contribute to the development of the Audiovisual Industry and Arts, and to foster the incorporation of new filmmakers to the culture of film.

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Gravehopping: Death? He wears it well.
Sept. 22nd 2005

The public was enthusiastic last night, after the world premiere of Gravehopping, by Jan Cvitkovic, at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, where this co-production involving Slovenia and Croatia is in competition. Cvitkovic's second feature (three years after Bread and milk) is an ironic yet human view on life and death enhanced by fantastic photography (thanks to DoP Simon Tansek.)

The film starts with an allusion to kitsch (the instrumental version of the hit "I Will Survive") but this music is out of context (as if anticipating the 70's disco club-scene): it is played at a funeral, the first of a long series throughout the movie. Pero, omnipresent in these scenes, is a professional eulogist; he receives money for praising people he never met. Sometimes his speeches echo his own life, but nobody notices. The script actually focuses on him, his family and friends —his father's repeated attempts to commit suicide, his masochistic girlfriend, his best friend who worships him, and his sister's tragedy.

The dialogues remain simple enough not to reveal what is going on in the characters' minds. Here, actions express the inner thoughts better than words. In fact, the first half of the film is somewhere between a light-hearted comedy and a sarcastic one (irony being a defence against the fear of death) and suddenly, halfway through the movie, everything becomes unbearably violent and leaves the spectator lost and very puzzled by the main character.

Gravehopping, clearly one of the most interesting movies in competition, will be released in Slovenia in October. This film, produced by the director and Janez Burger for Staragara, in co-production with Propeler Film Zagreb and RTV Slovenija, was financed by the Slovenian Film Fund and the Croatian Ministry of Culture. International sales are handled by Taskovski Films.

Vitor Pinto
Taken from Cineuropa News - Sept. 22nd 2005

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Spain's Alta snaps up Gravehopping
Sept. 22nd 2005

Spain’s Alta Films has jumped in to take Gravehopping on the day of its world premiere in competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
 
Gravehopping, produced by Slovenia’s Staragara, was directed by Jan Cvitkovic, whose Bread And Milk won Cvitkovic the Golden Lion Of The Future at Venice in 2001. Gravehopping is the Slovenian director’s second feature.
 
A stylised, quirkily black comedy with a shock ending about a man who gives sermons at funerals, Gravehopping went down well with the Basque audience at San Sebastian.
 
The Alta Films pick-up for Spain is the first on the title, which is set to travel to Pusan and London and will compete at Cottbus and Turin.
 
Sales are being handled by London’s Taskovski Films. It stars Gregor Bakovic and Sonja Savic as the deaf-mute Ida.

Finn Halligan
Taken from Screen Daily - Sept. 22nd 2005

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World Premiere Gravehopping  in official competition at San Sebastian Film Festival
Sept. 13th 2005

Competing for the Altadis-New Directors Award and the Montblanc Award for New Screenwriters

Official Screening    
Wednesday 21st  19h  in Kursaal 1
 
Other screenings
Wednesday 21 12:00 Kursaal 1 press screening only  
Wednesday 21 23:00 Warner Lusomundo 6
Thursday 22 18:30 Warner Lusomundo 6

On Wednesday September 21st (1900h), Gravehopping will receive it's World Premiere at the San Sebastian Festival.

Pero (Gregor Bakovic) is a professional funeral speaker in a small Slovenian town. His unique gift is to make every funeral that extra bit special. Pero just can't help turning his eulogies into witty personal confessions that bring the grieving crowd to tears for all the wrong reasons.

At home Pero is busy trying to intercept his father's (Brane Grubar) frequent but hopelessly inept suicide attempts. Meanwhile he also seeks to win the heart of local girl Renata (Mojca Fatur), who bears secrets beneath her innocent blonde curls. In all his daily fortunes and misfortunes Pero is assisted by his devote friend and fan Shooki (Drago Milinovic).

Although quite capable of enjoying life, Shooki often ponders about death and makes his own funeral plans. The otherworldly Ida (Sonja Savic) has a weak spot for him and makes sure to cross his path ever more often. It remains to be seen whether Pero and his companions will succeed in their search for intimacy and love in the absurd chaos that is life .

In such a seemingly innocent setting Gravehopping accumulates force and a dark abyss looms behind every moment of happiness - and the other way round. Director Jan Cvitkovic plays with the themes of heaven and earth, life and death.

His characters live on the edge between the two worlds and they do not always end up on the side on which they would prefer to be.  

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Variety review, Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Source - Zdroj
7 July 2005

A Bionaut Films, Bankwatch Network production. (International sales: Taskovski Films, London.) Produced by Vratislav Slajer, Martin Skalsky. Directed, edited by Martin Maracek. Screenplay, Maracek, Martin Skalsky.

An absorbing, intuitive expose of the frictions between industry and inhabitants in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Martin Maracek's "Source" follows the twin springs of oil and money as it reveals the ecological nightmare the region has become. Produced for the Prague traffic awareness movement Auto*Mat, pic will flow from its aud award at the city's One World Human Rights Film Fest to like-minded global events and cable berths.

From the p.o.v. of the smug apparatchiks in Baku boardrooms to the p.o.v. of the furious peasant whose fields are bisected by the massive Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline project, docu looks at the checkered history and suspicious motivations of players involved in extracting black crude from these rich fields. "Oil is not dangerous," insists one farmer, as his cows graze near pools of it. "By no means do we want to impair the ecosystem," ripostes a glib bureaucrat, despite evidence to the contrary. Questions surrounding the legitimacy of the 2003 election of president Ilham Aliyev are raised, while human rights abuses are explored. Simple, effective animation by Petr Smalec bookend and link the pic's three sections.

Camera (color, DV), Jiri Malek. Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Czech Films 2004-2005), July 7, 2005. Running time: 77 MIN.

Eddie Cockrell

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