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During the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Martin Horyna, a festival curator and freelance film critic who has been working for the Karlovy Vary IFF (KVIFF) since 2011.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you speak about your role at KVIFF.
Martin Horyna (MH): I’ve been programming for Karlovy Vary for many years, being part of the core team for 12 years. Last summer, I left the selection committee, and I’m now working externally as a consultant. The selection committee is composed of the Artistic Director and programmers. Then the team works with a group of consultants and advisors who scout for films, recommend films, and go through submissions. My role now is to scout for Asian films at festivals, markets, pitches, etcetera. And with my colleague Viktor Palák, we are co-curating the experimental section Imagina.
(UM): And what’s your main reason for coming to Berlinale?
(MH): Berlinale is both the festival and the market. For KVIFF, the market is an essential event because of the timing. We are looking for upcoming films here, and talking companies and individuals representing and promoting films. Marché in Cannes is too late for us, because the official selection is being locked before Cannes. Thus we do not go to Cannes because of the market. Of course, we also engage in some conversations at the market, we do a few meetings there, but we mainly watch films in Cannes.
(UM): If a filmmaker wants to submit a project to your film festival, what is the best way to approach you, is it through the submission, or how can they get in touch better and introduce their project?
(MH): Of course, submission is necessary for the film to be considered, but we like to be in direct touch with filmmakers. It’s good to identify who in the selection committee is covering “your” part of the world and then approach them. Even though we cannot be in detailed conversation with all submitted films, in general, we’re happy to hear directly from filmmakers.
(UM): When you say that you are looking for something more radical, do you mean in terms of content, do you mean in terms of the way that movies are being made, the style? Can you say more about what you mean exactly?
(MH): For that particular section, Imagina, we are looking for films that don’t follow traditional narrative patterns. This could be a really slow non-narrative film, but also any film playing with narrative patterns and/or conventions. With films in this section, you cannot easily follow the story and, at some point, you can get lost. But that is part of the experience. Being lost means that you are opening yourself to other means of film language. When we watch narrative films, it’s easy to follow characters, story patterns, and dramatic arcs. But when you fail connecting with all of these, you can access a deeper, remote layers of a film.
(UM): If a movie has a very complex language, it’s sometimes difficult to interpret, or people get lost in the interpretation. When you are picking those kinds of movies, are you afraid that you might pick something that makes sense to you but doesn’t make sense to others?
(MH): I’m not afraid of it, however for sure you can mismatch the film with your audiences. That’s one of the reasons why there are two of us co-curating this section. It allows us to have a conversation. With those works, the question whether you understand it or not is usually not the right one. If the audience feel that the film somehow slipped through their fingers, that they don’t know what to hold onto, it could be because they are trying too hard to find a rational approach to the film. With those types of films, you are in constant dialogue; watching, approaching, processing, and talking to other people about them. It is an experience. That’s why people say they are more demanding films, it’s because you are in a constantly unstable relationship with them. On top of that, these films often question your aesthetic values, in terms of looks, visuals, etc.
(UM): In terms of evaluating, do you have any kind of criteria? For example, are there stylistic elements that you would take into consideration, or is just subjective?
(MH): When we talk about this programming slate (Imagina), it’s difficult to define it this way. We try not to have all the films in the selection similar. There is six to seven features and two programs short films, so it’s quite a narrow selection. For sure we do not wish to have five slow observational movies there, for instance. Maybe one or two. Sometimes it is about exploring new and unseen, sometimes we follow filmmakers whom we admire for the way they repeatedly look at things in their filmography, who approach world differently then majority of filmmakers and majority of people. You can learn to be a bit more attentive to the world around you – these films require patience, sensitivity, attentiveness to detail, They are in no rush. Once you leave a cinema, you can see things differently, you can change your way of looking.
(UM): I should have asked you this question before, but you said you are also working on Asian cinema. Are you only looking for experimental Asian cinema?
(MH): In general, all kinds of films, so I try to meet all the Asian partners and companies and travel to Asia to meet filmmakers, producers, people who aren’t traveling to Europe often. It’s not only for experimental but all kinds of films.
(UM): You also do a kind of script consultation. I’m curious to know how you are do both things, because script consultation is trying to give coherency to the script as far as I understand, making it more logical, but you are looking for unpredictability, surprise, and going against the norms. When you are providing consultation for a script, are you focusing more on giving for experimental films or narratives?
(MH): It’s for any type of film. Overall, I’m not watching only so-called experimental films, I think the term is quite reductive, it’s part of what I watch, but here in Berlin and in all the major festivals, I look at the films in all the competitions and section, I follow all types of films. Even if you write more classical, story-driven films, you’re looking for authenticity, originality, and elements of surprise, they are just demonstrated differently, and you find them on different levels. When consulting a script, no matter what type of storytelling or non-storytelling it is, you want some kind of coherence, not being all over the place. All the films I admire have a certain inner logic, but the types of inner logics can be very divergent. Even the most chaotic films have structure, it’s not random, so I can’t consult anything in this sense.
(UM): Do you have any quotas, or are you just selecting based on the quality of the films?
(MH): We don’t have any written quota, it’s more about discussing elements of diversity when making the selection. We want to have representation of films from various parts of the world, from various types of directors. We want to have representation of genders, but those are things we usually discuss when selecting the films, and only when the selection is really out of balance in some of those elements, do we try to be more active in finding a film that can fit the section and put it back in balance. One year, we struglled finding a film from Europe for Imagina (surprisingly). We had a lot of Asian and South American representatives in the section. And sometimes it’s the other way around.
(UM): What is the impact of new technologies on creating experimental works?
(MH): We see use of artificial intelligence mostly in short experimental films so far. It’s still new. These short films made by/with the use of AI usually also reflect the role of AI in our world. Next step are films made with AI missing this reflective layer. So far, it’s always been about the reflective layer.
(UM): I’ve spoken to several programmers about the instability of the work, can you speak to the situation at KVIFF?
(MH): Not so much the case of Karlovy Vary, which I feel a bit lucky about. Part of KVIFF are other partner events we contribute to: the Pragueshort Film Festival, an autumn event Variations, and KVIFF Classics festival in Prague in December. So there are more opportunities to employ KVIFF staff giving then a full time contract all year round.
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