As ever, the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) included a number of short films across several sections of its program, most notably in Pragueshorts and Imagina. The former includes films screened at the Pragueshorts festival, a sister event to Karlovy Vary arranged by the same organisers, while Imagina surveys the more experimental and poetic sides of cinema. This year, three themed programmes comprised the Pragueshorts section, including a selection of shorts for kids, one screening dedicated to past award-winners, and some newer Czech films.
From Caroline Taillet’s heart-breaking performance in Maïa Deschamps Oysters to the atavistic striving of Zoel Aschbacher’s stomach-churning satire Fairplay, the programme of award-winners included some stirring moments. Several films, like Rakan Myasi’s Trumpets in the Sky and Hylnur Pálmason’s Nest, will be familiar to festival goers across the past couple of years. Indeed, Pálmason’s film and Ramzi Bashour’s The Trees played at this very festival just last summer. As such, this line-up and the collection of films aimed at younger viewers have undoubtedly gone down well with audiences but brought little of fresh interest to those keen to see new work in the short format.
The third Pragueshorts screening, of newer Czech films, was a little more intriguing, with two pieces in particular warranting extra attention. Both films deal with individuals who become involved in less-than-savoury practices and are forced to come to terms with the decisions they’ve made. In the case of Damián Vondrášek’s Rites, two boys on the social margins have decided to make a bid to join a street gang. Both must decide how far they’re willing to go for acceptance, in this coming-of-age story with the aesthetic of a summer afternoon’s adventure, but far darker possibilities. An even more dangerous gang preside over Martin Kuba’s Vinland, in which a Georgian immigrant labours for Russian mobsters in Prague. An educated man, he has his boss’s trust, but an altruistic act in the name of justice might jeopardise everything.
Arguably, though, the main draw for shorts at Karlovy Vary this year was the selection in the Imagina section, where perhaps the most notable inclusion was a new film by revered auteur Pedro Costa. A strange but compelling piece, The Daughters of Fire concerns three sisters separated by the eruption of the Pico do Fogo on Cape Verde. Here, Costa breaks the screen into a tryptic and casts three singers as the sisters, who intone a lament written in collaboration with a Portuguese early music group, Os Músicos do Tejo. The result is suitably searing.
Several of the other highlights from this year’s Imagina shorts had a playful relationship with reverence and memory. In Erin Weisberger’s In the Heavens and on Earth, the filmmaker takes 16mm images of architecture – notably a Catholic church situated in her local neighbourhood in Montreal — and re-uses them to create a kaleidoscopic portrayal of place. A shimmering work full of flickers and colourful non-figurative compositions, it manages to remain an affectionate portrait, though as the filmmaker explained in her post-film Q&A, some residents may have associations which transform the abstract visuals into something more critical. The veneration of Adrian Duncan’s Prosinecki, which debuted at Rotterdam in January, patiently observes slowed-down footage of the eponymous, elegant, Croatian midfielder. The narration offers the perspective of a younger player, now entering his twilight years, who reflects on the meaning of the beautiful game and the balance between pragmatism and aestheticism. In Robert Prosinecki he finds a player who teaches him the value of both.
Jan Soldat’s Faces of Death takes its reverence in a slightly more direct route, by paying homage to the late, great Christopher Lee. The film is part of an ongoing series of such films – including the likes of Staging Death and Dead Again – which are compilations of death scenes played by esteemed actors across their careers. Lee is generally deemed to be the actor to have perished on screen the most times, from his earlier years with Hammer Horror being staked through the heart in iconic fashion as Dracula, to his later demises in blockbuster franchises like Star Wars and, most crunchingly, The Lord of the Rings. The montage takes in not just Lee’s history but that of cinema, bringing to the fore motifs and trends in the undulating rhythms of film style, through one actor’s overwrought death throes. It is heartening that films as inventive as these are being screened to packed audiences at Karlovy Vary, suggesting there’s a little life left in the old medium yet.
The Film Verdict at KVIFF 57
