Karlovy Vary adds Work in Progress €10,000 prize and new Czech Industry Week

The 47th Karlovy Vary Internaitonal Film Festival has announced a number of further programme highlights and industry plans.

The festival will open June 29 with the international premiere of Belfast punk story Good Vibrations by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glen Leyburn. Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love will close the festival.

Susan Sarandon will be attending the festival to present Jeff Who Lives At Home and to accept the festival’s Crystal Globe Award during the closing ceremony.

Other guests coming to present their films are Todd Solondz for Dark Horse, Mark Cousins with What Is This Film Called Love and The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Istvan Szabo and Helen Mirren (another Crystal Globe honoree this year) with The Door, Luis Minarro with 101: Manoel de Oliveira, Joachim Lafosse with Our Children (A perdre la raison), Amir Naderi with Cut and Ira Sachs with Keep The Lights On.

The Works In Progress 2012 will for the first time see a prize of €10,000 in services awarded to the best project. The prize is sponsored by event partner Barrandov Studios. The jury selecting the best project out of the 20 presentations from Central and Eastern Europe will be Ivo Andrle of Czech distributor Aerofilms, Silje Nikoline Glimsdal of Denmark’s TrustNordisk and Amy Dotson of the US-based Independent Filmmaker Project.

The list of works in progress selections will be unveiled next week, but one early announced selection is An Unlikely Romance by Czech director Ivan Vojnar.

Barrandov will also be kicking off the festival’s first Czech Film Industry Week on June 30. At the Becher’s villa, the programme will include panel discussions, lectures, presentations and workshops. The special guest of the programme will be legendary Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi and other speakers will include Jan Nemec, Ivan Fila, Olmo Omerzu and Marek Jicha. “With our partners we follow the festival’s industry programme with projects helping professionals and involved public to understand position of contemporary Czech film production in international context,“ said Petr Tichý, executive director of Barrandov Studio Company.

Another new industry initiative is the Pitch & Feedback programme, created with the Czech Film Center and Slovak Film Center. Seven films in pre-production will get feedback from film professionals including Simon Perry from ACE and French sales expert Matteo Lovadina. Those pitching include Martin Krejčí, Lubomír Konečný, Karla Stojáková, Jiří Konečný and Marko Škop.

Other panels will address topics such as the EU’s Creative Europe programme, Czech film support, and piracy. There will be a Cooperation with Hollywood panel on July 1 featuring casting director Avy Kaufman, FilmNation COO Milan Popelka, producer Richard Brown, agent Ilene Feldman, producer Melinda Jason, and agent Brent Morley.

The Grand Jury (competition previously reported) will be presided over by Richard Pena of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and will also include Croatian director Rajko Grlic, Greek producer Maria Hatzakou, Palestinian-Israeli actor Makram Khoury, Polish writer-director Joanna Kos-Krauze, educator Ivo Mathe, and Quebecois actor Francois Papineau.

The East of the West jury is comprised of Macedonian director Vladimir Blaževski, Czech critic/teacher Jaromír Blažejovský, journalist/scholar Natascha Drubek, Hungarian director Agnes Kocsis, and Sundance programmer John Nein.

The documentary film jury includes US producer Ron Yerxa, European Film Festival director José Luis Cienfuegos, Italian director-producer Tizza Covi, London-based writer Pamela Jahn and Czech producer Jiri Konecny.

The Independent Camera Jury is comprised of Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi, Visit Films‘ Aida LiPera, and Czech Television executive Michael Malek.

Other juries at the festival include Fipresci, Ecumenical, Fedeora, Netpac and Europa Cinemas Label.

The festival will present 217 films (including 34 shorts) including 22 world premieres. There are currently 744 film professionals set to attend.