The world premiere of the digitally restored copy of Truffaut’s drama Two English Girls will grace the festival’s traditional Out of the Past section, while names such as David Lynch, Peter Capaldi, and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet have been added to the exclusive selection of cinematic interpretations of Franz Kafka.
OUT OF THE PAST
In collaboration with the respected French production and distribution company MK2, which this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the festival will present the world premiere of a digitally restored version of Two English Girls, François Truffaut’s poetic period drama about a love triangle. This October, it will mark forty years since the legendary French filmmaker’s untimely death. Fans of one of France’s most beloved filmmakers (but newcomers to Truffaut as well) will not want to miss the portrait documentary François Truffaut, My Life, a Screenplay, which uses a wealth of previously unseen material from Truffaut’s life from both private and artistic spheres.
Two English Girls, dir. François Truffaut. Photo credit: Pierre Zucca
Alexandre O. Philippe, renowned creator of original documentary essays about the history of cinema, returns to the festival with a special programme based on his documentary The Taking (2021). The film explores American mythology through the fascinating phenomenon of Monument Valley and the socio-philosophical dimensions of the American landscape. Along withThe Taking, Philippe will present three films that offer a singular perspective of the American landscape in cinema: John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984, in a newly restored copy), and Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms (2003).
Another restored gem being shown at KVIFF this year is Let’s Get Lost (1989), famous photographer Bruce Weber’s award-winning documentary look at the final years in the life of the brilliant jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, which was honored with an Oscar nomination.
This year’s “chapter” in Karlovy Vary’s ongoing series dedicated to the king of American independent cinema, John Cassavetes, will show his final writer/director feature, Love Streams (1984), in which he and his lifelong partner and muse Gena Rowlands portray an unusual pair of siblings.
Iva Janžurová and Theodora Remundová, mother and daughter, documentary subject and documentary director, two women whose unusual documentary portrait of legendary Czech actress Janžurová, Actress, will have its premiere in Karlovy Vary.
Honored with a recent digital restoration is also the quirky Czechoslovak satire Murdering the Devil (1970), an inimitable work of art that brought together two exceptionally talented individual – director, screenwriter, and costume designer Ester Krumbachová and actress Jiřina Bohdalová.
The festival will commemorate the centenary of the birth of a major figure in the history of domestic cinema, director Oldřich Lipský, and his exceptional collaboration with screenwriter Jiří Brdečka, with a screening of a 35mm print of the cult comedy classic The Mystery of the Carpathian Castle (1981), an exhilaratingly brilliant mix of genres filled with nuanced wordplay.
The Taking, dir. Alexandre O. Philippe
THE COMPLETE KAFKA
The festival’s previously announced section dedicated to cinematic reflections of the work of Franz Kafka has now been finalized. The retrospective section honoring the famous Prague native, The Wish to Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema, will show thirteen feature films, four medium-length films, and five shorts.
The originally announced selection has been expanded to include an exclusive programme dedicated to David Lynch’s lifelong love for the work of Franz Kafka. One block of films will include the surrealistic short film The Grandmother, which Lynch made in 1970 with financial support from the American Film Institute, as well as the third episode of the third season of the cult series Twin Peaks, which most intensely reflects the admiration of one peculiar genius for another.
The Grandmother, dir. David Lynch
One of the best-known works in the rich filmography of the legendary radical duo of film intellectuals Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet is Class Relations (1984), an adaptation of Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika.
A decade later, in his first time in the director’s chair, British actor Peter Capaldi shot Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life. This playful and original short film depicting Kafka struggling with writer’s block won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
The half-hour K is also a debut film, shot by the multifaceted Italian artist Lorenza Mazzetti while she was living in the UK. Made in 1954, the film – considered a forerunner to the UK’s famous Free Cinema movement – is the oldest title in the festival’s Kafka programme.
The complete list of the films in the retrospective can be found HERE.
Class Relations, dir. Jean-Marie Straub, Daniéle Huillet
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