Phillip Bergson

Such a dizzying round of festivals and festivalettes in Bradford, London, lucky Lecce,Cluj, vibrant Valencia and now, in the very Heart of Europe and the original Bohemia, at the loveliest and liveliest of them all, Karlovy Vary, must I to to you - dear readers, cineastes, cynics and cinephiles- long disappointed by the otherwise delayed flow of my postcards from these varied filmic feasts - now imminently describe. Whatever dross may be depressing you in multiplex or illegal download, patient yourselves yet a briefer while and I shall shortly begin to recount the heady cocktails of subject, international talents, and life-enhancing liquids on which I have been supping since wery velcome  Wybrica lubricated that month of Polish delights in London earlier this spring, up to my perambulations past the springs at the 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, about to cloture on what will doubtless by a feverish Saturday night in July, 2009.

 Merely to whet your appetite, and to seek to excuse my recent tardiness in regular reportage, consider how I spent my latest Friday. Viewing a two-hour Czech feature, a more than warm war film called Tobruk, stunningly shot in Tunisia and loosely based on Stephen Crane; loitering within a tent to catch the Golden-Palm-winner from Cannes 2009, Das Weisse Band ,confected in crisp monochrome (and not a little monotone) by that Austrian arch-humourist Michael Haneke; sipping a timely dry martini with Jiri Menzel in the opulent balcony bar of the City Theatre (decorated by no less a Full House-painter than Gustav Klimt) before the world premiere of a delightful Polish farce, Operation Danube, in which one of their tanks, with a very loose canon, accidentally crashes into a Czechoslovak pub in 1968, before sprinting- like a Cinderella in reverse- just before midnight, to the similarly sumptuous surrounds  of the Grand Hotel Pupp (known to you as the location of the second, vastly inferior- if somewhat more  financially successful- screen version of Casino Royale) for the traditionally lavish Association of Czech Producers' annual Party, apparently celebrating -as my assiduous attendance at their mid-afternoon Press Conference had enabled me to be so briefed-the 70 per cent fall in international film-making in the country and probable collapse of the otherwise staving-off-the-crisis revenues from foreign commercials being shot here. Not yet having lost a shoe, I nevertheless almost literally bump into another aspiring local film director on my way in- ex-President Havel, about to transfer his latest play to the screen, and as I entered the small hall, he was appropriately enough,Leaving.Let us hope his debut will open the 45th Karlovy Vary International Festival next year: Ein ganz normaler Freitag!, as the artistic director of the Recklinghausen Filmwoche(Focus: films about gastarbeiters) might say.But when I have world enough and time and an alcohol-free PC, I shall presently give you the low-down on the highlife and the gastgebers of the past, fast few months- and a few reviews too. Fasten your seat-belts and watch these spaces!

Phillip Bergson