Kaurismaeki, Kusturica to visit Czech Summer Film School

Prague, July 12 (CTK) - Finish director Aki Kaurismaeki, Bosnian-Serbian Emir Kusturica and Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul will visit the 37th Summer Film School (LSF) to be held in Uherske Hradiste, south Moravia, on July 22-31, the festival's programme manager Iva Hejlickova said yesterday.

Weerasethakul has shot the film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives that won the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Kusturica will have a concert with The No Smoking Orchestra within the LSF festival's accompanying programme. He is also to meet his former teacher at the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, Czech director Otakar Vavra who turned 100 this year.

The LSF will present the so far largest retrospective of the Austrian-born American film-maker, screenwriter, producer and artist Billy Wilder (1906-2002), director of the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe, Hejlickova said.

Wilder shot some 60 films and won six Oscars and 20 nominations. He was the first to receive an Oscar as a producer, director, and scriptwriter of the same film, The Apartment (1960).

"We will show tens of full-length, medium-length and short films mapping the history and current tendencies of Czech and world cinematography," said LFS artistic director Pavel Bednarik.

The festival will present silent films by Czech Gustav Machaty (1901-1963), including his legendary Erotikon (1929), early works by German-born director Ernst Lubitsch (1892- 1947), the largest collection of Romanian films in 20 years and films by Slovak-born Fero Fenic who will receive the award of the Association of Czech Film Clubs, said Hejlickova.

The association will present several films from its distribution, including The Eternal Return (1943) and Orpheus (1949) featuring Jean Marais.

The LSF's special section will recall the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York in September 2001.

A digitised copy of Czech historical film Marketa Lazarova (1967) directed by Frantisek Vlacil, which was voted the all-time best Czech film by critics, will also be screened at the LSF, after it was introduced at the 46th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia, last week.