SLOVAK film director Dušan Hanák received the Award for Special Contribution to World Cinematography at the International Film Festival (IFF) in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. The prize was awarded by the administration of the capital and by the Sofia IFF; so far, 27 filmmakers won, including names like Peter Greenaway, Volker Schlöndorf, Wim Wenders, Jiří Menzel and Nikita Michalkov.
Hanák was handed the award on February 28, and before the festival started on March 6, there was a retrospective of the Czechoslovak New Wave.1969.Prohibited Films project, which showed Bulgarian audiences the work of then-Czechoslovak filmmakers that wound up being shelved for decades: Hanák’s film 322 from 1969; Birds, Orphans and Fools by Juraj Jakubisko; and The Gala in the Botanical Garden by Elo Havetta. The retrospective is completed by the two-part full-length 1960s documentary by Martin Šulík, 25, and the Czechoslovak New Wave 1-2 / 25 to Šesťdesiatych, alebo Československá Nová Vlna I-II, from 2010, which includes cameos by 25 filmmakers with commentary by film historians.
In the IFF Sofia contest, two Slovak films will compete: Mira Fornay’s My Dog Killer (Môj pes Killer, which won the Rotterdam film festival and will thus compete in the Big Awards section), and Velvet Terrorists (Zamatoví Teroristi) by Pavol Pekarčík, Ivan Ostrochovský and Peter Kerekes (which was screened recently at the Berlinale film festival and won the Prize of the Readers of the Tagesspiegel daily). These films’ screenings will be attended by Fornayová and Ostrochovský, the Slovak Film Institute (SFÚ) informed in a press release.
