Yesterday, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival premiered the restored, digitised version of Milos Forman’s 1968 classic The Fireman’s Ball.

The film was restored with participation of KVIFF, the National Film Archive of Prague and Czech Movies Foundation.

The film is the second of a planned 200 Czech films to be digitally restored by the partners, following Marketa Lazarova.

The restoration took place at Universal Production Partners (UPP) and Soundsquare.

The group supervisin ghte work included the NFA (Michal Bregant, Jitka Kohoutová, Vladimír Opěla, Jeanne Pommeau, Jana Přikrylová), UPP (Jiří Čvančara, Ivo Marák, Jan Zahradníček), Soundsquare (Marek Klasna, Pavel Rejholec), from FAMU and Association of Czech Cinematographers (Marek Jícha, Jiří Myslík) and outside of these institutions (Anna Batistová, Tereza Frodlová, Miloslav Novák).

The film’s original DoP Miroslav Ondříček supervised the results.

The project’s aim was to achieve the appearance of the film as it was screened during its first run in the Czechoslovak distribution in 1967 and 1968. The original source materials for the restoration were from the NFA and from the Film laboratory services of Barrandov Studios.

Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball (Hori, ma panenko) was a milestone of the Czech New Wave, marking his first colour film and his last to be shot in Czechoslovakia. The comedy/political satire is set at a ball for voluntary firemen.

 

 

 

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