Prague, Sept 29 (CTK) – Director, scriptwriter and producer Miloslav Smidmajer Tuesday presented his full-length documentary on Czech-born Oscar-winning film director Milos Forman that will be released in cinemas on October 8.
Smidmajer, who shot another two documentary films on Forman in 1990 and 1996, also prepared a longer version of his latest film in four sequels for television.
“The documentary was created in the past five years at the sites where Forman was staying – that is in New York, Los Angeles, Connecticut, Madrid, Valencia, Paris as well as Prague,” Smidmajer said after the screening.
His crew also visited the towns in the Czech Republic where Forman spent his childhood, Smidmajer added.
In the film, Forman, 77, speaks about his private life and film career openly for the first time. His own recollections are accompanied by shots from his films and from his home in Connecticut.
A number of other famous personalities who cooperated with Forman, also appear in the documentary, such as scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, producers Paul Rassam and Saul Zaentz, actor and producer Michael Douglas, along with other famous actors and actresses such as Annette Bening, Woody Harrelson, Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem and Luise Fletcher.
Forman, who studied screenwriting at the Film Faculty of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), made his film debut Konkurs (Audition), combining the elements of a documentary with a feature film, in 1963.
In the former communist Czechoslovakia he directed his first full-length feature film – Cerny Petr (Black Peter, 1964) and other black comedies, such as Lasky jedne plavovlasky (Loves of a Blonde, 1965) and Hori, ma panenko (The Firemen’s Ball, 1967).
Forman left his homeland after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and settled in the United States where he became a citizen in 1975.
In the 1970s, Forman scored a great success with One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) that is one of only three films to have won Oscars in all five major categories (Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress).
Among his American projects from the 1970s are also his U.S. debut Taking Off (1971) and an original film version of the musical Hair (1979).
Forman collected his second Best Director Oscar for Amadeus (1984). Most scenes of Amadeus were shot in Forman’s homeland and a number of Czechs also worked in the film crew.
Forman’s other American films are Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Man on the Moon (1999), and his latest Goya’s Ghosts (2006).
Most recently Forman directed A Well Paid Walk, a film made after the performance of a Czech opera buffa that he staged with his son Petr and Matej in Prague’s National Theatre.
