Hardly a coincidence – just days before the opening of the 40th Hungarian Film Week in Budapest (27 January to 3 February 2009), the Hungarian Parliament voted to amend its film law and bring it in line with European Union regulations. Previously, the Hungarian film law had offered hefty tax rebates to international film productions. Now, state subsidies and tax allowances for films are limited to productions with “appropriate cultural content” – meaning that the focus should be on projects that reflect Hungarian and European customs and values. Preferences, however, are given to producers and directors who had won awards…
Author: Ron Holloway
Alone the fact that over 90,000 admission tickets were sold made the 37th Belgrade International Film Festival – FEST (20 February to 1 March 2009) one for the books. Thanks for a roving festival staff headed by Miroljub “Mica” Vukovic, top-quality entries were booked from Europe’s leading film festivals (Cannes, Venice, Locarno): Stephen Daldry’s opening film The Reader (USA/Germany), Clint Eastwood’s Changling (USA) Ron Howard’s Frost / Nixon (USA), Gus Van Sant’s Milk (USA), and Darren Arnofsky’s The Wrestler (USA).The “Horizons” section also included choice European hits: Karen Shakhnazarov’s The Vanished Empire (Russia), Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra (Italy), Paolo Sorrentino’s Il…
Lonely people, desolate urban landscapes, and moral dilemmas are at the core of Michael Klier’s Alter und Schönheit (Age and Beauty) – as found in all films of his self-styled Berlin cycle, a collection of simple stories with penetrating observations by a genuine auteur with a style and vision to match, each lensed by the same French cinematographer, Sophie Maintigneaux. To some extent, these tales reflect the director’s own wanderlust ways. Born in Karlovy Vary in 1943, Klier was driven out of Czechoslovakia with his family, settled later in the German Democratic Republic, where he once served a prison sentence…