Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic - For Central and Eastern
European (CEE) filmmakers the two decades since the implosion of
communism in 1989 have been a rather sobering and at times fraught
experience.
Within a short space of time, the collapse the Soviet-backed
states across the CEE pushed movie making in the region to the brink
of an abyss with state support drying up and cinemas closing down or
converted to sex clubs or discos. In the harsh new post-communist
world filmmakers were left to find their own way.
'In 1989 we were reborn,' said Nemenyi Adam, whose career in the
Hungarian movie industry spans about quarter of a century.
'We had to change,' Adam told the German Press Agency dpa at the
Karlovy Vary Film Festival, which is held each year in the historic
Czech spa town. 'Suddenly we had to be like producers everywhere. We
had to make money,' he said.
Moreover, just as the CEE motion picture industry struggled to
find its feet in the wake of the fall of communism, another
potentially lethal rival appeared on the movie scene as Hollywood
productions began filling up what was left of the region's cinemas.
But Eastern European film has proved to be been remarkably
resilient with a revival now underway in the region's movie making as
directors explore both life under communism as it ground its way to
collapse as well as the changes triggered by its fall.
'Time has moved faster during those 20 years, new things have
happened and for many of us who lived through that period, those
times seem very far away,' said Karlovy Vary Film Festival President
Jiri Bartoska.
Of the 14 movies competing for Karlovy Vary's top honours, the
Crystal Globe for best feature film, four are from Central European
directors with the festival now a major showcase for new Central and
European cinema.
Also spurring on CEE filmmakers have been the recent success of
Eastern European movies at the world's major movie festivals.
This includes Bucharest-based Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks
and 2 Days, which is set during the dark days of Nicolae Ceaucescu's
reign and which won the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Palme d'or
prize in 2007.
A decade ago there were no films being made in Romania, yet now
the industry manages to pump out between 10 and 20 a year.
But whatever progress the new young CEE democracies may have made
towards forging new western-style economies, the dreams of what the
end of communism might mean appear to have faded.
Many of the movies screened at Karlovy Vary this year present a
rather dispiriting and even desolate portrayal of life since
communism was swept away two decades ago.
The picture they paint is a world where one-time communist chiefs
have excelled, a grim border sex tourism trade has flourished, and
gypsies face prejudice and heavy-handed bureaucratic treatment and
where primitive blood feuds have returned to Albania.
'People were forced to lay their blood feuds aside during
communism, but they were never forgotten,' Koli, a young student is
warned after he returns to his native mountain village to find
himself part of a blood feud dating back 60 years in Albanian-born
Artan Minarolli's Alive.
In Slovakian-born Vladimir Balko's Soul at Peace, forty-something
Tono returns from prison bitter and resentful but most importantly
unable to adjust to the new world that has taken shape in his village
since he was sentenced for a timber scam.
Moreover, the Karlovy Vary this year marked the 20th anniversary
of the collapse of Moscow-backed communism in the CEE by screening a
special program of movies that depict the events which helped to
redefine history during the last century.
This includes the 1991 movie Sweet Emma, Dear Boebe from Hungary's
Istvan Szabo about two former Russian language teachers struggling to
qualify as English teachers following the end of communism so they
can regain the social status they once enjoyed.
Also included in the festival's 20 Years of Freedom lineup is
Polish director Juliusz Machulski's How Much Does a Trojan Horse
Weigh? which looks back on the 1980s through the eyes of a woman who
transcends time to return to communist Poland.
For filmmakers in the Balkans the breakup of the former Yugoslavia
in the late 1980s unleashed pent up ethnic tensions which pitched the
region into a series of bloody wars and that eventually also engulfed
the region's cinema industry.
'We lost everything in the war. But it's coming back,' said
Zagreb-based director Goran Rusinovic, whose psychological thriller
Buick Rivera delves into the ethnic hatred of the 1990s and was
screened at Karlovy Vary this year.
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