This year’s edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is set to present a retrospective on Franz Kafka and his influence on cinema, dubbed The Wish To Be A Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema. It will examine how the influential Czech writer has impacted filmmakers from Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Ousmane Sembene, Jan Nemec and Steven Soderbergh.
This June will mark the centenary of the final moments of Kafka, who passed away at a sanatorium in the Austrian town of Kierling. Kviff, which kicks off on June 28, will launch this strand in honor of the writer featuring films such as Soderberg’s noir mystery Kafka, Welles’ The Trial, Scorsese’s After Hours as well as Roman Polanski’s The Tenant among others.
The festival will also be honoring casting director Francine Maisler, who has worked with directors such as Denis Villeneuve, Terrence Malick and Alejandro González Iñárritu and whose credits include The Revenant,...
This June will mark the centenary of the final moments of Kafka, who passed away at a sanatorium in the Austrian town of Kierling. Kviff, which kicks off on June 28, will launch this strand in honor of the writer featuring films such as Soderberg’s noir mystery Kafka, Welles’ The Trial, Scorsese’s After Hours as well as Roman Polanski’s The Tenant among others.
The festival will also be honoring casting director Francine Maisler, who has worked with directors such as Denis Villeneuve, Terrence Malick and Alejandro González Iñárritu and whose credits include The Revenant,...
- 4/23/2024
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
The Karlovy Vary Film Festival and Variety have teamed up to honor Francine Maisler, one of the world’s most respected casting directors, whose recent credits include “Dune: Part Two,” “The Bikeriders,” “Challengers,” “Civil War” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Maisler has worked on more than 70 feature films and is a recipient of 15 Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America, including for “Marriage Story” in 2020 and “Don’t Look Up” in 2021. As well as working with director Denis Villeneuve on “Dune: Part Two,” “Dune,” “Arrival” and “Sicario,” her other films include Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” and “Knight of Cups,” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” and “Birdman.” In 2022, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for her work on HBO’s “Succession.”
As part of its homage, Karlovy Vary will hold a special screening of one of the films which Maisler worked on. Maisler will also give a public master class,...
Maisler has worked on more than 70 feature films and is a recipient of 15 Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America, including for “Marriage Story” in 2020 and “Don’t Look Up” in 2021. As well as working with director Denis Villeneuve on “Dune: Part Two,” “Dune,” “Arrival” and “Sicario,” her other films include Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” and “Knight of Cups,” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” and “Birdman.” In 2022, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for her work on HBO’s “Succession.”
As part of its homage, Karlovy Vary will hold a special screening of one of the films which Maisler worked on. Maisler will also give a public master class,...
- 4/23/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Czech-born Milos Stehlik, an award-winning film critic and commentator for National Public Radio station Wbez and the film curator, founder and artistic director of the pioneering media arts center Facets Multimedia in Chicago, died Saturday of cancer.
Stehlik founded Facets in 1975, screening hard-to-find international and independent films in a Chicago Lutheran church. When the non-profit organization found a permanent home on Fullerton Avenue in 1977, Stehlik branched into video distribution, eventually offering thousands of otherwise unobtainable titles for sale and rental, both over the counter and by mail. As viewing formats changed, so did the Facets catalogue, moving into dvds and streaming.
Titles that Facets first made available in the U.S. or released on its private label included Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” Milos Forman’s “Black Peter,” Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House Is Black,” Frantisek Vlácil’s “Adelheid,” and collections of experimentalists such as the American James Broughton,...
Stehlik founded Facets in 1975, screening hard-to-find international and independent films in a Chicago Lutheran church. When the non-profit organization found a permanent home on Fullerton Avenue in 1977, Stehlik branched into video distribution, eventually offering thousands of otherwise unobtainable titles for sale and rental, both over the counter and by mail. As viewing formats changed, so did the Facets catalogue, moving into dvds and streaming.
Titles that Facets first made available in the U.S. or released on its private label included Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” Milos Forman’s “Black Peter,” Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House Is Black,” Frantisek Vlácil’s “Adelheid,” and collections of experimentalists such as the American James Broughton,...
- 7/8/2019
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Despite being a nation with an illustrious cinema heritage, Czech Republic is not a country that is especially well served by modern distributors in the UK. Their rich history is continually mined for brilliant home entertainment releases by the likes of Second Run and Arrow - bringing the venerated likes of Jiri Menzel, Vera Chytilova, Jan Nemec, Frantisek Vlacil, and Karel Zeman to British audiences - but contemporary Czech cinema remains criminally neglected.
- 11/3/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
As far as the immersive powers of cinematic spectacle go, it’s doubtful any will come close to rivaling the achievements of Russian auteur Aleksei German, a figure many have hailed as the post important director in his country following Tarkovsky. And yet, he is still largely unknown, at least in comparison to the worldly renown of his comparable peers. Over his five decades as a filmmaker, German only produced five films, a perfectionist whose later works far outshine the fastidiousness displayed in the comparable methods of someone like Stanley Kubrick.
Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...
Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...
- 6/30/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
By now, this burly, seething musk ox of a movie, arguably the most convincing film about the Middle Ages ever made, should be on everyone's tongue.
Essentially cinema non grata everywhere until the Czechs restored it and voted it their national Best Ever in 1998, Frantisek Vlacil's elliptical nightmare about warring medieval tribes in the Bohemian highlands has been undergoing a global re-evaluation, traveling with a Vlacil retro in 2002 and eventually video showcases all over.
Newcomers will be dazzled and baffled in turn; Vlacil's strategy of adapting Vladislav Vancura's apparently untranslatable novel was to craft an impressionistic odyssey that elides just as much narrative information as it imparts.
Get distracted worrying about narrative clarity, however...
Essentially cinema non grata everywhere until the Czechs restored it and voted it their national Best Ever in 1998, Frantisek Vlacil's elliptical nightmare about warring medieval tribes in the Bohemian highlands has been undergoing a global re-evaluation, traveling with a Vlacil retro in 2002 and eventually video showcases all over.
Newcomers will be dazzled and baffled in turn; Vlacil's strategy of adapting Vladislav Vancura's apparently untranslatable novel was to craft an impressionistic odyssey that elides just as much narrative information as it imparts.
Get distracted worrying about narrative clarity, however...
- 2/26/2014
- Village Voice
Before Sunrise / Before Sunset At only $7.99 if you don't own Before Sunrise and Before Sunset you can't pass this deal up. Yes, they may become available on Blu-ray soon, but at $7.99 is it really that much of an expense not to own two of the greatest romance films everc Buy 'em both, watch 'em and head on out to check out Before Midnight and feel good all over.
Safety Last! (Criterion Collection) I already wrote up my review of Criterion's Blu-ray for Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (read it here) so most of you should already know I highly recommend this title. This is a silent film right up there with the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin's best. Film lovers won't regret the purchase.
Marketa Lazarova (Criterion Collection) I also reviewed Criterion's Blu-ray for Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova, which isn't a title for everyone. This is...
Safety Last! (Criterion Collection) I already wrote up my review of Criterion's Blu-ray for Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (read it here) so most of you should already know I highly recommend this title. This is a silent film right up there with the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin's best. Film lovers won't regret the purchase.
Marketa Lazarova (Criterion Collection) I also reviewed Criterion's Blu-ray for Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova, which isn't a title for everyone. This is...
- 6/18/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
You’ll be hard pressed to make a more exciting discovery than Criterion’s digital transfer of Frantisek Vlacil’s 1967 Czech classic, Marketa Lazarova. Voted the best Czech film of all time by a 1998 panel of Czech critics, the film had been unavailable for Western consumption (beyond rare art house screenings) until late 2007 when UK studio Second Run released a Region 2 copy. After a 2011 restoration from Universal Production Partners, the Us now has access to a gloriously restored digital transfer, a phenomenal presentation of what stands as one of the world’s cinematic wonders, a densely structured unique experience of cinema as visual poetry.
While the narrative outline seems succinctly evident, especially considering Vlacil’s attempts to retain the essence of the famed novel upon which it’s based by announcing quick summaries via title cards as before a set amount of chapters, the glorious immersion of sight and sound...
While the narrative outline seems succinctly evident, especially considering Vlacil’s attempts to retain the essence of the famed novel upon which it’s based by announcing quick summaries via title cards as before a set amount of chapters, the glorious immersion of sight and sound...
- 6/11/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
"I think the point about Marketa Lazarova is that when you first see it you're confused, and by that I mean you know that the whole story of what you're looking at is obscured, but it's still there, but you have to look hard." Peter Hames (film historian) Quick, name a Czechoslovakian film or film director... I would expect most of you are either drawing a blank or shouting out Milos Forman. The reason I ask is because on the back of Criterion's new Blu-ray release of Marketa Lazarova it reads, "In its native land, Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation." I can't speak to the first part of that statement as I believe this was the first, bonafide Czech film I've ever seen, but the second rings true. When it comes to Czech cinema,...
- 6/10/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Any New York reader will know that it's always a treat to visit the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. Starting this Thursday, April 11th and running through June 9th, Afa has a good dozen plus films playing that'll you'll most certainly want to take note of. Peter Gutierrez chimes in on some of the selection for their Middle Ages On Film series, but before he gets going, let me flex my editorial powers a moment more and mention a film he did not see from the series: Marketa Lazarova. Deemed by many film critics and historians to be the best Czech film ever, Frantisek Vlácil's turbulent epic about a bloody feud between a Pagan family and a Christian one is, at the very...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 4/10/2013
- Screen Anarchy
A look at what's new on DVD today:
"The Thin Red Line" (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
Released by Criterion Collection
No, you won't be getting the hours of deleted Adrien Brody or George Clooney footage from Malick's World War II epic, but this Criterion version is most certainly an upgrade from the previous bare-bones DVD edition with 14 minutes of outtakes, new interviews with Sean Penn and composer Hans Zimmer, among others from the cast and crew, an audio commentary with cinematographer John Toll, production designer Jack Fisk and producer Grant Hill and more.
"7 Days" (2010)
Directed by Daniel Grou
Released by Mpi Home Video
French Canadian horror author Patrick Senécal adapts his own novel to celluloid about a doctor (Claude Legault) who intercepts the man (Remy Girard) who raped and murdered his young daughter and turns the tables on him in a cabin in the woods. With a résumé including TV series like "Vampire High,...
"The Thin Red Line" (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
Released by Criterion Collection
No, you won't be getting the hours of deleted Adrien Brody or George Clooney footage from Malick's World War II epic, but this Criterion version is most certainly an upgrade from the previous bare-bones DVD edition with 14 minutes of outtakes, new interviews with Sean Penn and composer Hans Zimmer, among others from the cast and crew, an audio commentary with cinematographer John Toll, production designer Jack Fisk and producer Grant Hill and more.
"7 Days" (2010)
Directed by Daniel Grou
Released by Mpi Home Video
French Canadian horror author Patrick Senécal adapts his own novel to celluloid about a doctor (Claude Legault) who intercepts the man (Remy Girard) who raped and murdered his young daughter and turns the tables on him in a cabin in the woods. With a résumé including TV series like "Vampire High,...
- 9/23/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
"For much of the half-century since the premiere of Frantisek Vlácil's feature debut The White Dove (Holubice), the Czech director has been treated in his home country with a reverence out of all proportion to his undeservedly minuscule international profile," writes Michael Brooke in Sight & Sound. "Although he is considered one of the most important harbingers of the Czech New Wave — and lived to see his medieval epic Marketa Lazarová (1967) voted the best Czech film of all time by a panel of local critics and industry experts on the centenary of Czech cinema in 1998 — his work was practically invisible in the UK until the enterprising Second Run DVD label released his masterpiece in 2007. Thankfully, Vlácil's UK profile is set to rise significantly this year: Second Run has also disinterred his films The Valley of the Bees (Udolí vcel, 1967) and Adelheid (1969), and September sees a near-complete retrospective of his work playing in London,...
- 9/1/2010
- MUBI
David Cairns
The Forgotten: Flaming Beefcake
The Forgotten: Remember You Must Die
The Forgotten: That Glaring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Forgotten: Forty Million Frenchmen
The Forgotten: April 29
Fernando F. Croce
Now on DVD: “Panic in the Streets” (Elia Kazan, 1950)
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Punch-Drunk Love"
Movie Poster of the Week: "La Salamandre"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Band of Ninja"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Oh, That Nastya!"
David D'Arcy
Podcast. David D'Arcy and Alexei Popogrebsky
Podcast. Bahman Ghobadi, Roxana Saberi and Obash of The Yellow Dogs
The Ferroni Brigade
The Way to the Golden Donkey
Sex and Politics: Jack Stevenson's "Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s"
Daniel Kasman
Video Sundays: Music Videos by An Older Generation
Image of the Day: Damsels in Distress #3
Video Sundays. From Hollywood to New German Cinema, The Impressionist Whirligig Camera...
The Forgotten: Flaming Beefcake
The Forgotten: Remember You Must Die
The Forgotten: That Glaring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Forgotten: Forty Million Frenchmen
The Forgotten: April 29
Fernando F. Croce
Now on DVD: “Panic in the Streets” (Elia Kazan, 1950)
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Punch-Drunk Love"
Movie Poster of the Week: "La Salamandre"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Band of Ninja"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Oh, That Nastya!"
David D'Arcy
Podcast. David D'Arcy and Alexei Popogrebsky
Podcast. Bahman Ghobadi, Roxana Saberi and Obash of The Yellow Dogs
The Ferroni Brigade
The Way to the Golden Donkey
Sex and Politics: Jack Stevenson's "Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s"
Daniel Kasman
Video Sundays: Music Videos by An Older Generation
Image of the Day: Damsels in Distress #3
Video Sundays. From Hollywood to New German Cinema, The Impressionist Whirligig Camera...
- 5/2/2010
- MUBI
If you want a stark understanding of the difference between a transportive work of art and an immersive work of art, you could do worse than to watch Vlacil's Marketa Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees back to back. It'll take you approximately four-and-a-half hours, but it'll be worth it. Lazarová, which accounts for about three of those hours, is an unclassifiable period epic that takes about as oblique an approach to narrative as any film I've ever seen, such that if you're not paying a particular kind of attention, you're apt to completely miss out on the "doomed love affair" (as per the back cover notes on the Second Run DVD release) that it's ostensibly/partially about.
This is part of what I said when I reviewed that Second Run DVD back in 2008: " 'Now I regret all the times I've used words like 'power' and 'energy' to describe rock and roll,...
This is part of what I said when I reviewed that Second Run DVD back in 2008: " 'Now I regret all the times I've used words like 'power' and 'energy' to describe rock and roll,...
- 4/27/2010
- MUBI
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