Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Karel Och the Artistic Director for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. What follows are the highlights of that interview.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you describe how you select films to connect with the audience and change their perceptions?
Karel Och (KO): A connection with the audience is key. Now some films do the opposite. They are building a war between the audience and the filmmaker. The films where the filmmakers seem to be doing them just for themselves. We try to avoid those films. We can have films that are challenging, very unusual, idiosyncratic, alternative, and Avant-garde, but the filmmakers have to always be thinking about what effect it will have on the spectator.
I don’t say they should comply with the spectator, but they should think about the spectator as a partner or an adversary or anything. They should have the spectator in mind. The worst thing that can happen is that people walk away from the cinema and forget about the movie in five minutes. I don’t have a problem if somebody hates the film. If the person who hates the film tells me why they hate it, perfect.
I think we often focus on films that challenge the perception of the audience. In 2014, we had the Ukrainian film, The Tribe, with deaf characters played by deaf actors. You’re watching the screen, and the perception is different because the characters cannot hear what you hear. And it makes you rediscover the way you see the film.
The change of perception is also connected to the gaze, male and female. I talk with my female friends in the business, who follow more radical path nowadays trying to redefine things, and they talk about the female gaze.
I try to see films with a different eye sometimes. I’ll offer this possibility to others because there is some switch. Take a certain genre, and then put it into a different context. And it’s like, “Okay. I haven’t seen this before”. So, we are looking for new things and courageous things.
(UM): I feel like in recent years as festivals push to talk about race and gender equality, the festivals are starting to look the same. Is this something you have also felt?
(KO): I think you are right to a certain extent. I mean, I would have to see all the films. There is a certain tendency towards stereotypes. With the MeToo movement, there are films that are clearly opportunistic. They take the idea that men are animals and women are victims and make it an agenda movie, which is a pity because that doesn’t do them any service.
We focus on intimate stories. We know that we have many films in the program addressing different social-political issues. But every time, it’s through a relationship story, family story, period piece, etc. And then, it can become a feminist film. Look at The Word, the Czech film, which focuses on a family of a notary from 1968 in Czechoslovakia. It’s about a couple of parents (a husband and wife). At the end of the movie, you realize the wife is the protagonist, not the husband.
We approach our job without any agenda. We sit in the cinema, watch a movie, and then talk about it. Then, we put the whole thing together. For fun, we told each other, “Let’s count the female filmmakers.” The official selection has 33 films, and 11 of them are female filmmakers. We don’t say it out loud. We don’t announce it as news, but if somebody asked us, we have an answer.
(UM): I saw a trailer for your festival featuring famous people like Mel Gibson, is this something you always do or is it new?
(KO): If you go on YouTube and put in KVIFF trailers, you’ll see maybe 12 or 15. We started more than ten years ago when we figured out an idea for the trailers connected to the sense of humor of Central Europe, which is very ironic, very self-deprecating, and our character is not to be too impressed by the big things but be more like, “Okay.”
(UM): I attend a lot of festivals and I was super impressed with how close of a connection there is between the people and the festival. There are parties everywhere. Is this a culture you planned or was it organic?
(KO): This festival was born in 1946. Of course, it needed a second start after the fall of Communism, and that came in the early 1990s. So, it’s an old/young festival, that is a big part. I mean, the 90s were on fire. Everything was possible. People would sleep outside in their sleeping bags. Now, it’s calmer, but the spirit is still there in the festival. It’s at the beginning of summer vacations, summer holidays, so students come here. The people my age, give the kids to the grandparents, lock the apartment, come here, and they behave like students. Because you don’t have housework, you are here to watch films, maybe drink, and talk to friends you haven’t seen for a year. So, the atmosphere is amazing.
And in the cinema, you can have a sponsor of the festival, a student, and a star sitting next to each other. Geoffrey Rush went to see Corsage, the Austrian, and sitting next to him were a couple of students, and next to them, there was a sponsor. It’s all one world.
(UM): You brought films from Cannes, for example, so how important is having a Premiere for you?
(KO): Your question gives me an opportunity to continue to explain the special nature of this festival. As I said, it was reborn in the 90s, and especially in the 90s, this was a place where you could see Arthouse Films in the Czech Republic. So, my predecessors would travel to the festivals, and take from Venice, Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, San Sebastian, etc. And this would be the sidebar section.
Of course, we put a lot of emphasis on the official selection, the main competition, for example, special screenings, and World Premieres. That’s about 35 films. Then you have the sidebar, which is just Czech Premieres. So, we try to find a balance between the exclusive presentation of the new titles, which is important for the development of the festival, and the best of the best from the year that we offer to our audience. Because imagine, if you are a regular spectator, you don’t care if the film is premiering here or if it’s played in ten festivals, you just want to see a good film. So, this is a combination we try to find.
(UM): Going back to the male and female gaze post-Metoo. There was a film from Sundance you screened (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) about a woman who seeks a male prostitute, and it was given valorization for showing escort services in a good way. Then I watched a Japanese film (A Far Shore), and it was totally different, but when it comes to women as escorts, it’s becoming very dangerous. It’s becoming males are predators or men are trying to abuse the system.
(KO): It depends on the territory. You take America, and you get Japan, these are two worlds completely apart. The director of the Japanese movie (Masaaki Kudo), I think, he’s doing very courageous things. Maybe if he did it somewhere else, it’d be a little like, “Okay. We’ve seen that before”. But you have to realize he’s doing it in a country that is still very old-fashioned in terms of the man and woman relationship. I like that what I see comes from the country that it comes from.
(UM): I noticed that there aren’t very many Iranian films recently at the festival. I’ve talked to some other festival directors and they told me it’s because Iranian filmmakers aren’t radical enough or their films are funded by the Iranian government. I’m just curious if there is a reason behind the drop at your festival.
(KO): I think you are asking this question because Iran, at one point, had a huge cinema presence. You can’t always have lots of masterpieces. This year (2022), there’s news that there are no Iranian films in the bigger festivals. We have two Iranian filmmakers, one lives in Canada, but both are of Iranian origins. And each competition has an Iranian filmmaker. So, I don’t think it’s little representation. Both films are amazing and will be remembered after the festival. Last year, maybe it was only a few films, but next year maybe it will be more. You never know. That’s the beauty of our job, you never know.
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