Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) has programmed a selection of films from previous festival editions, to celebrate its twin anniversaries of 80 years since the festival was founded, and its 60th edition.
The festival has selected seven films for its pre-existing Out of the Past retrospective strand, which this year will have a focus of KVIFF 60/80 to mark the two anniversaries.
The titles include Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death, which played at the festival’s second edition in 1947. Also selected is Ken Loach’s Kes, which won the festival’s top prize in 1970; and Cecil Holmes’s Captain Thunderbolt, which played in competition at the seventh festival in 1952, was then long considered a lost print, before being rediscovered in the Czech National Archive and screened at the 2024 festival.
A complete list of titles in Out of the Past – KVIFF 60/80 will be published at the beginning of June, with the festival’s official selection announced on June 2.
The 60th edition of the festival will run from July 3-11. The discrepancy between 80 years since its founding and a 60th edition is due to the festival only running in alternate years from the mid-1950s until the 1990s.
The festival is also planning events to commemorate its anniversaries, including an exhibition of outdoor panels by the main Grandhotel Pupp and Hotel Thermal venues; a new architectural design for the festival’s event spaces; a photographic exhibition dedicated to late Czech playwright and president Vaclav Havel, on what would have been his 90th birthday; and a sneak preview in Marianske Lazne, a town 40km from Karlovy Vary that co-hosted the first four editions of the event.
“We should remember that the foundations laid by the festival’s first editions in the postwar years have given rise to an event that has managed to survive despite all internal tensions and external influences, that has withstood attempts at ideological control and efforts to abolish it, and that has succeeded in transforming itself into an internationally recognized showcase and a venue where filmmakers and audiences can meet in a unique atmosphere of harmony,” said Krystof Mucha, executive director of the festival.
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