The spirit of Václav Havel and Jiří Bartoška lives on on the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), and attendees of the 60th edition of the Czech fest will really feel a way of continuity and legacy, a reminder of the lengthy historical past of the pageant, together with improvements and updates that the staff all the time appears to be like so as to add frequently when it is sensible.
In actual fact, Kryštof Mucha, who joined the pageant staff in 1997, turned its government director in 2004 and has added the function of chairman of the board of the KVIFF Group, says for him and his colleagues, it’s all about connecting the previous and the long run. This mixture of trying again into historical past and paving the best way into the long run can even be a central theme of this yr’s double anniversary version of KVIFF, on condition that the fest was launched 80 years in the past.
Certainly, one of many oldest movie festivals on this planet, Karlovy Fluctuate was a part of the so-called “first wave” of post-war European movie festivals. Its first version was held in 1946 as a non-competitive occasion with 13 options, together with international participation, organized by the spa cities of Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Fluctuate in the course of the first half of August.
Organizers highlighted earlier this yr that this primary version truly happened “before the inaugural editions of the festivals in both Cannes and Locarno.” The occasion was at first known as the Czechoslovak Movie Competition, and the primary version was truly held in Mariánské Lázne; then in Mariánské Lázne and Karlovy Fluctuate; and later solely in Karlovy Fluctuate.
The Venice Movie Competition is older, having been based in 1932 and renewed in 1946, with its first post-war version following KVIFF’s inaugural version.
That lengthy historical past, with all its ups and downs, is one thing that Karlovy Fluctuate will spotlight in its double anniversary yr. Two key figures have lengthy been seen as ambassadors for the fest. They’re long-time pageant president Bartoška, who died final Might after being the general public face of KVIFF for greater than three many years, and Havel, the writer and former dissident-turned-Czech-president, who died in 2011, however was a key power behind the KVIFF scenes.
“For this year’s anniversaries, we wanted to point to a few moments from the history of the festival, so there will be a big exhibition in the streets, like last year when we had an exhibition of photos of Mr. Bartoška,” shares Mucha. “So we will feature the history of the festival, starting from 1946 until today. Also, 2026 is the Havel year, because he would be 90 this year. So we also want to remind people that Václav Havel was one of our big supporters, so there will be a small presentation of photos of him.”
Concerning the significance of the politician and the actor-turned-festival-president for KVIFF, Mucha tells THR: “Havel was one of the key people in the new era of the festival, because Mr. Bartoška brought Miloš Forman to the festival, and Havel was a friend of Mr. Bartoška’s. In those days, everybody was interested in meeting with Václav Havel.”
The story goes like this: Havel would inform individuals from the movie world all for assembly him that he could be in Karlovy Fluctuate in July, and they need to come there in the event that they actually needed to get along with him. “That was the best support we could ever have,” Mucha remembers. “When I went to the United States, I was the one to prepare the invitation letters. And I went to Mr. Havel’s office, and he was using these colored pens, green and red, and he would write: ‘We will see each other in Karlovy Vary.’ So I was using these invitation letters, and that really helped.”
The 2 well-known names and their shut relationship have been pivotal when KVIFF fell upon laborious occasions. In 1993, the federal government of the brand new Czech Republic withdrew monetary help for a lot of cultural occasions to focus them on changing into financially unbiased, placing KVIFF in danger. After a backlash, the Ministry of Tradition convened a bunch of influential residents to determine a path ahead. Bartoška and veteran movie journalist Eva Zaoralová labored with the ministry, the town of Karlovy Fluctuate and the historic Grand Lodge Pupp, which later turned the inspiration for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Lodge, to determine the Karlovy Fluctuate Movie Competition Basis.
In 1995, Bartoška turned the pageant’s president, Zaoralová its program director (a place she held till her loss of life in 2022). Then the Worldwide Federation of Producers Associations revoked the fest’s A-category standing and transferred it to the brand new Golden Golem fest in Prague. However Havel got here via. He declined to go to the Prague occasion, as an alternative displaying up on the opening night time of KVIFF. From there, KVIFF developed into at present’s haven for cinema followers and celebrities.
However the historical past of KVIFF additionally extends effectively past Bartoška and Havel, “we are very proud of being the second-oldest film festival in the world,” Mucha tells THR. “It’s only by a few days, because Locarno and Cannes came out a couple of days after us, but this is very important for us.”
The truth that this yr marks KVIFF’s sixtieth version in its eightieth yr tends to confuse individuals. The rationale was that in the course of the time of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Bloc, the political management needed to have an A-list movie pageant in Moscow, but in addition realized that there was already an current fest in Karlovy Fluctuate. “So they decided it would be biannual events, taking place every second year in Karlovy Vary and in Moscow,” Mucha explains.
One thing attention-grabbing occurred when Bartoška died final yr. “A lot of people came to us and asked if he was the founder of the festival, and we realized that, even in this country, many people don’t know about this incredible history of the festival and that it started in 1946,” shares Mucha. “So we said, okay, we have to remind people of this and that they should be proud of something like that.”
KVIFF’s lineup announcement this yr additionally name-checked one of many pageant’s founders, long-time director of programming A. M. Brousil, who put an early deal with non-European cinema, opening picks past the area the place the fest takes place. And Karlovy Fluctuate proudly highlighted that its anniversary program options “extraordinary geographical diversity.”
And that’s precisely the place the previous and future connect with preserve KVIFF and its audiences and attendees energized. Concludes Mucha: “We have a film festival that survived the ugly [decades under Soviet domination 1948-1989] in this country. Our festival has a rich history, and we can and should be proud of it.”
