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2009 Central European Film Festival - Key facts
Why a Central European Film Festival?
The first festival, held in October 2008, was the brainchild of a group of Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Czech cinema-lovers. They had noticed that there were almost no films whatever from their countries in Luxembourg cinemas, and so decided to take matters into their own hands and screen a selection of outstanding films, many of them international festival prize-winners.
So the initial idea was to fill an obvious gap and, at the same time, give Luxembourg audiences an insight into the way that politics, economic life, society and culture have changed in this all too unfamiliar part of Europe.
Over 2,300 spectators attended the first edition of the festival. Building on this success, the organisers are now presenting an even broader and more diverse range of films, with more special guests and events.
2009 programme
To start with, the programme naturally includes some of the most striking feature films of recent years, such as Karamazovi, a rather unusual take on Dostoyevsky's masterpiece that was voted best Czech film in 2008, 33 sceny z ¿ycia, featuring the magnificent Julia Jentsch, which has won several international prizes, Kontroll, a tale of mystery set in the Budapest metro, and Wojna polsko-ruska, based on novelist Dorota Mas³lowska's iconoclastic best-seller, to name but four.
The 2009 festival will also showcase a number of fascinating documentaries, including René, best European documentary in 2008 (Arte Prize), Slepé lásky, which won the Art Cinéma Prize at Cannes in 2008, Po-Lin, with a commentary read by the actress Hanna Schygulla, and Chemia, which will be followed by a discussion with the director, Pawe³ £oziñski. One evening will be set aside for short documentaries and another for animated films.
'20 ans après la chute du mur' film cycle at the Cinémathèque
The major new feature of the 2009 festival is the film cycle '20 ans après la chute du mur' (20 years on from the fall of the Wall), celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the political changes that occurred in 1989 with seven films depicting different aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain and the difficulties experienced during the transition period. Festival-goers will be able to watch masterpieces from the communist era such as Wajda's Cz³owiek z Marmuru and Menzel's Skøivánci na niti, some of them banned for years, as well as recent films such as Ferenc Török's Moszkva tér.
Events
A large number of directors and actors have kindly accepted our invitation to take part in discussions with the audience after their films. They include: Hanna Schygulla, who did the voice-over for the documentary Po-lin and will also be presenting her own short film; Xawery ¯u³awski, the director of Wojna polsko-ruska, who will be accompanied by the actress Maria Strzelecka; and Slovak film-maker Dušan Hanák, director of Papierové hlavy and a close observer of the workings of communist regimes.
The festival includes two exhibitions: Prague through the Lens of the Secret Police (at the Cinémathèque) – a selection of photographs taken by the Czechoslovak secret police; and a major retrospective entitled One hundred years of Polish cinema, in the Abbaye de Neumünster courtyard.
There will also be a concert of the Czech band Sporto, musical evenings and a number of surprises.
Charity project
This year's festival will support a charity project. Entry to all the screenings is free of charge, but the organisers would like to encourage festival-goers to support a charity project (full details to follow) by putting donations in a king-sized piggy bank. At the end of the festival, the poor thing will be smashed and all of the money will be forwarded to the people in charge of the project. Details of exactly how the money is being used will subsequently be posted on our website. In this connection, it should be pointed out that everyone working for the festival does so on an entirely voluntary (i.e. unpaid) basis.
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