Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2010

• 
• 

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 23 August 2010 14:54

Written by David D'Arcy

The old town of Karlsbad two hours west of Prague is sleepy most of the year. It’s a place for spa treatments, and most of the patients are old. So is the best architecture in Karlovy Vary.

German was the language of this resort town. Mozart visited and his music was performed here. During the days of communism, the hotels were filled with guests from “fraternal” Arab countries. They still return in the summer. These days the new visitors are Russians. The former occupiers, for whom furs and jewelry are the new uniform, have bought up property. They support a restored Russian Orthodox church with an excellent choir and they fill the tables at the Casino at the Hotel Pupp.

They also fill screenings of Russian films at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 2 - 10, 2010). Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun) and Alexei Popogrebsky (How I Ended This Summer) were two of the Russian directors who made the trip this summer.

The Russians have driven up prices here, to the contentment of the local merchants. They could soon be filming their movies here, as could Hollywood studios, thanks to a new 20% rebate on money spent, intended to incentivize a lagging industry. Yet Karlovy Vary remains a place where you can get a great massage for $30 and a great beer for $1.50.

The film at Karlovy Vary that you weren’t likely to see anywhere else was Hitler In Hollywood by the Belgian director Frederic Stojcher. It’s a mockumentary about an international conspiracy to destroy European cinema, and the film is in the form of an investigative journey by Maria de Medeiros (one of many stars in Quentin Tarentino's Pulp Fiction) and Micheline Presle (the octogenarian who was a glamorous actress in French post-war cinema). 

The allegations go something like this – as World War II approached, both the Nazis and the American saw an opportunity. Books were giving way to cinema as sources of information for a new generation (and propaganda media for Hitler, who understood movies.)

For President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, films were a Trojan horse for the American products that American firms wanted to sell in Europe and everywhere else.  And the wheels started turning….. No, Hitler never journeyed to Hollywood, but the execs visited him for some face-time.

One person who discovered the plot was a director named Luis Aramcheck, who directed Ms. Presle (called by many ”the most beautiful woman in the world”) in a now-lost film called I Don’t Love You. Then Aramcheck disappeared.

Will European cinema win this battle, or just reveal the truth about a plot to weaken and kill it? Or will the continent become a cultural continent of the US? You already know the answer, as a group of researchers did at a Belgian university, where the project began as a scholarly investigation before it was turned into a satire.

Maria de Medeiros is a lot easier to watch than Michael Moore, but there are some parallels. The Hollywood types turn and run when confronted with her j’accuse. It’s all about accountability.

Eventually the truth behind the plot emerges….in Malta. I won’t ruin the intrigue for anyone who gets to see Hitler in Hollywood.

The good news in the Czech Republic was that in Karlovy Vary you could drown your sorrows in a truly European product – local beer. The US conquest wasn’t complete. At least not here, not yet.

• < Prev
• Next >