NEWLY RESTORED VERSION OF CALAMITY TO BE INTRODUCED BY A START-STUDDED DELEGATION OF ACTORS
On Thursday, 16 January 2025 at 7pm, several legends of Czech and Czechoslovak cinema who appeared in Věra Chytilová’s legendary 1980 film Calamity – Bolek Polívka, Jaroslava Kretschmerová and Dagmar Bláhová – will be on hand at the Světozor cinema to officially open the third edition of the KVIFF Classics showcase of classic Czech and international cinema. The new, digitally restored version of Calamity was presented last fall at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France.
KVIFF Classics presents a total of seven films at the Světozor cinema, each of which has contributed to world cinema in its own original way. The screenings are preceded by an introduction in which programmers from the Karlovy Vary festival share interesting information about the film with the audience.
A BREATHTAKING THRILLER BY KUROSAWA. PETER SELLERS IN A PROVOCATIVE (AND RELEVANT) SATIRE
At 3pm on Friday, 17 January, audiences can see Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s acclaimed High and Low (1963), which The New York Times called one of the best detective thrillers of all time. This is followed at 6pm by McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), whose director Robert Altman would have turned 100 this year. Set in 1901, the film follows former gambler John Q. McCabe (legendary actor Warren Beatty) as he opens a brothel in an inhospitable frontier town. Friday’s program concludes at 8:30pm with the legendary Peter Sellers (who, like Altman, was born a hundred years ago) in Being There (1979), one of the era’s most provocative films about U.S. presidential elections.
UNUSUAL ROLES, STELLAR PERFORMANCES BY HUMPHREY BOGART AND PAUL NEWMAN
KVIFF Classics continues at 3pm on Saturday, 18 January, with the noir film In a Lonely Place (1950), starring the legendary Humphrey Bogart in the unusual role of a darkly charming Hollywood screenwriter with somewhat sadistic tendencies. This is followed at 5:30pm by a screening of Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), featuring Paul Newman in a pivotal role of his career – Newman would have turned 100 just shortly after the end of KVIFF Classics. And we conclude with Army of Shadows (1969), legendary director Jean-Pierre Melville’s gripping thriller faithfully describing the French Resistance during the Second World War.
