New Hollywood classics get rare big-screen airing at Karlovy Vary

The New Hollywood section at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is back due to popular demand. This year, director Paul Mazursky and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond are just two of the big names presenting the festival’s retrospective of 1970s American films. The period, which spawned movies such as ‘Easy Rider’, ‘Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’ and ‘McCabe and Mrs Miller’, is often thought of as one of Tinseltown’s finest. Variety magazine’s Steven Gaydos helped bring some of these classic Hollywood films to the Karlovy Vary film fest:

“The section was really the idea of Karel Och from the festival, which I really loved, because I actually started doing some things with LA film critics in 1992 - starting to point out that far back that something extraordinary had happened and that it was worth talking to those filmmakers and making sure that their stories were told. And that people looked at this cinema because Hollywood had changed very much, and I guess that I was just nostalgic for that kind of interesting film-making. So these are now film which are really taught in film schools, and a chance to see them on the big screen and have the filmmakers here, it’s just a great opportunity.”

You have been talking about these films with seemingly a great deal of fondness, is this one of your favourite Hollywood periods? And why?

'Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice'

“Yes, I mean I don’t think it is false nostalgia, because as Paul Mazursky there started rattling off a list of films that he likes today, I feel the same way. I don’t think it is automatically that things from the olden days are better. I don’t think that there has ever been a better film made than ‘The Lives of Others’ – and you know, that’s a brand new film by a brand new filmmaker. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ was very good, I really loved Mel Gibson’s film ‘Apocalypto’. There are still movies being made all over the world which are really good.

“But these films are special. There is a subversive humour and a political edge to them, and a kind of searching for answers quality that I think is worth looking at on its own merit. I also think it is worth reminding people that this is stuff which is important to films.”

I was talking this morning to [festival organizer] Eva Zaoralová, who was saying that this year, the quality of films being shown is, she thinks, higher than ever. Do you agree with that?

Nicolas Roeg, photo: Štěpánka Budková

“I do agree. I mean, it’s easy for Eva to say, it’s her festival. But I don’t disagree with her, I think that overall, across the board, the films that are coming here for the first time, the movies that are coming here from other festivals, her competition selections, our Variety critics’ choice section, the specialty programming with tributes to Nicolas Roeg and New Hollywood, and the British horror films at midnight – everything is coming together here rather nicely. And it’s giving people a really interesting range of different film-going opportunities. So it is very rich.

“And of course, I talk to all of these guests who come here who are just in heaven. You know, they love the town, they love the people, and they love the movie-going experience. I think we have to do something about the Panasonic theatre, maybe we just burn it down. And then there are some screens that need to be improved. But then they improved the big hall with mice seats and they are upgrading in other places, so it’s doing rather well.”