SheilaJohnston President of FIPRESCI Jury

After completing her doctoral thesis on Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the Slade School of Fine Arts, University College London, Sheila Johnston was a founder-journalist for The Independent, for which she covered film for ten years. She has written on the arts for the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, The Times, Sight and Sound, the New York Daily News, Interview magazine and other British and American publications as well as for websites such as screenonline.co.uk and theartsdesk.com. Her publications include a monograph on Wim Wenders (British Film Institute) and a biography of Keanu Reeves (Sidgwick and Jackson / Pan). She also co-authored the BFI's Cinema Book, a definitive guide for film studies teachers, and has lectured on cinema and popular culture for institutions including the British Council, the British Film Institute and the Open University.

Jiri Menzel President of the Balkan Jury

Film Director, Theater Director, Actor and Script Writer. Jiri Menzel is one of the most well known Czech a film and theatre director, and is also a film and stage actor. Born in Prague (23.02.1938), he majored in directing at the Prague Film School FAMU (1958 - 1962) at the time which gave birth to a whole generation of film makers who came to be called the "the New Wave in Czech Cinema". He began his professional career at Kratky Film Prague as assistant director to Věra Chytilova, but since his film-story debut based on Bohumil Hrabal's tales he has worked predominantly at the Barrandov Film Studios. As stage director he was mostly involved with the Drama Club, Prague (but also other Prague theatres - the Theatre on the Balustrade, the National Theatre, etc.) and also directed plays at theatres in Bochum, Zurich, Basle, Paris (Comédie Française), Berlin, Zagreb, Dubrovnik  and at numerous other European theatres. His acting parts were created in co-operation with Czech film directors as well as Costa Gavras and the Hungarian directors of the seventies. Menzel's film roles are uniquely characteristic for the omnipresent duality of the tragic and comic, gravity and farce and also for his special poetic view of the world. From January 2000 till April 2003 he was an artistic director of the Prague theatre “Divadlo na Vinohradech”. Jiri Menzel has been honored with lifetime achivement awards in numerous international film Festivals all over the world. His film “I Served the King of England” 2006 is the most awarded from his works. Awards include FIPRESCI prize on Berlinale 2007, Golden Gladiator award at International film Summerfest of Durres 2008 and many other national and international awards.

Jan Harlan – Masterclass

I joined Stanley Kubrick in 1969 for his Napoleon project, which was unfortunately abandoned; I added the study of film-production with a great teacher to my previous profession. My first film as an assistant was “A Clockwork Orange”. Four years later I became Kubrick’s Executive Producer and worked for Warner Bros. on “Barry Lyndon”, “The Shining”, “Full Metal Jacket” and “Eyes Wide Shut”. Searching for projects, evaluating, preparing and abandoning stories was part of an exciting professional life with Stanley Kubrick. One of my sidelines working with him was suggesting music. After Stanley Kubrick’s death in 1999 I worked with Steven Spielberg on “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”. Later I made the documentary “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures” and a documentary about the British actor Malcolm McDowell “O Lucky Malcolm” (both for Warner Bros); I made further films with Katia deVidas including a documentary with an international youth orchestra around the Dvorak Cello Concerto and my first “poetic” short film “Adam’s Paradise”, written by my wife Maria. In addition to lecturing at film schools and serving in juries at international competitions, I am working with the Filmmuseum in Frankfurt on THE STANLEY KUBRICK EXHIBITION, which travels the world – presently in Paris and next year in Los Angeles.

St. Albans, July 2011

MASTERCLASS

BARRY LYNDON, USA, 1975, 184’

Drama, war

Production: Hawk Films, Peregrine Productions

Writer & Director: Stanley Kubrick

Producer: Stanley Kubrick

Based on: The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

Director of Photography: John Alcott

Editor: Tony Lawson

Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Leon Vitali, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Gay Hamilton, Godfrey Quigley, Steven Berkoff, Marie Kean.

With ornate imagery reminiscent of paintings from the story's 18th century period, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel depicts the rise and fall of a sensitive rogue in the British aristocracy.

Awards: Oscar 1976: Best art direction, Best costume design, Best music score. Bafta Film Awards 1976: Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Cineatography Direction 1975, CEC Award Spain 1977, David di Donatello Award 1977, German Guild Film Award 1978, LAFCA Award 1975.

Note from the excecutive producer Jan Harlan:

Barry Lyndon fits well into all of Stanley Kubrick’s films: War, vanity, and egocentric thinking reign supreme, topics that connect all of Kubrick’s films. With Barry Lyndon the cinematographer and designer in Stanley Kubrick wanted to put the late 18th century onto the screen. We know what people and their houses looked like from paintings, drawings, descriptions and, of course, surviving architecture. To put this onto the screen, however, was a tall order and a huge task for the art department; the limitation to candles for interior lighting at night was just one of the many challenges. The film is a milestone in the history of Cinematography. 

David, a child-like android uniquely programmed with the ability to love, longs to become "real" so that he can regain the love of his human mother.

Awards: Venice Film Festival 2001, Future Film Festival Digital Award. World Soundtrack Award 2001. Young Artist Award 2002: Jake Thomas. Mainichi Film Concours 2001, Readers Choise Award. Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards 2002. BMI Film & TV Awards 2002. Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA 2002; Saturn Award.

Note from the producer Jan Harlan:

A.I. Artificial Intelligence was like a love affair for Stanley Kubrick. He wrestled with the story for over a decade before finally offering the project to his friend Steven Spielberg. He felt that Steven would be the better director for this high-tech movie, and Steven honoured Stanley by staying very close to his script. Again, Stanley’s pessimism about the destiny of mankind is revealed in this story; global warming, the explosion of pornography, warfare, over-population and decadence are at the heart of this tale. Stanley never doubted that we would destroy ourselves. Artificial intelligence, in the shape of these very sophisticated robots we see at the end of the film, might eventually well be the only remaining memorial to our former ingenuity. 

Claudia Cardinale

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Having lived a colorful, turbulent life, replete with triumphs and calamities, Francis Coppola now returns full circle to the aspirations of his younger self:  creating personally meaningful films which reflect both quotidian life and spiritual longings, and which ask questions.  One of the most honored film artists of his or any generation, Coppola has also endured crushing defeat and heart-rending sorrow.  His cornucopia of honors overflows with Oscars, Globes and Palmes, Writers and Director’s Guild awards---yet he also knows what it feels like when a dream shatters.  In 1983, he gave up Zoetrope Studios, the Hollywood-based workplace he hoped would lead American filmmaking into a technologically vibrant 21st Century.   The ensuing financial hardships led to years of ‘work for hire’ – the disdainful, legal term for those who serve at the pleasure of others.  For a proud and independent soul, this meant directing films in the corporate sphere, over which he had no rights of ownership.  He chose projects which piqued his imagination even as he paid off debts and built alternative businesses to provide enduring financial security for his family and himself.   But after the dawning of a new century, having met these challenges, Coppola once again made an unorthodox choice: to regain expressive freedom by returning to the ethos of his early years – making movies of modest budget, far from a Hollywood sound stage, with a small crew and actors who are passionately committed.  Youth Without Youth is the first of these projects.  

          *

Born April 7, 1939 in Detroit, Coppola is descended from musically-gifted Southern Italians who immigrated to New York in the early 20th Century.  His maternal grandfather, Francesco Pennino, was a songwriter, and his father, Carmine, a flutist and composer.  He himself plays the tuba and string bass modestly, and might have gone on to a career in music were it not for a bout of polio, when he was nine, which kept him bedridden for well over a year.  During his confinement, he developed an interest in comic books, puppetry and ventriloquism, and started making 8mm movies when he was back on his feet.  He lost momentum during his teen years as his family moved from place to place to accommodate his father’s employment.  But he found kindred spirits at Great Neck High School and again at Hofstra College where his stellar contributions to theatre arts brought him the school’s highest honor, the Beckerman Award.  After graduating in 1959 with a B.A. in Theatre Arts, he enrolled at UCLA for graduate work in film.   Coppola’s unerring instinct for career-building led to an apprenticeship at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.   After varied stints on low-budget genre pictures, Corman allowed him to direct a film from his own screenplay, Dementia 13.  It was during this period that he met Eleanor Neil whom he would later marry.   In 1962, Coppola’s student screenplay Pilma, Pilma won the Samuel Goldwyn Award at UCLA, after which he began his professional career in earnest.  His adaptations of Reflections in a Golden Eye, This Property Is Condemned, and Is Paris Burning? were produced, making him a much-in-demand screenwriter.  He also wrote  a script about George Patton based substantially upon Ladislas Farago’s Patton:  Ordeal and Triumph.  In 1970, Patton won 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, shared by Coppola with Edmund H. North. His second film, You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), served as his MFA thesis and marked his first appearance at the Cannes Film Festival where he would later enjoy acclaim, twice winning the Palme d’Or (The Conversation, 1972; Apocalypse Now, 1979). He directed Fred Astaire and Petula Clark in Finian’s Rainbow, adapted from the Broadway musical, followed by an original work, The Rain People.  As the 1960s wound down, Coppola made two momentous decisions.  By now the father of two sons, GianCarlo and Roman, he relocated his family to San Francisco where he founded, with George Lucas, an independent production company, American Zoetrope.  Lucas’s first two features, THX-1138 (1970), and American Graffiti (1972) were produced under its aegis, but the company was high maintenance, and in 1970 Coppola was persuaded to direct a gangster picture based upon a best-selling novel by Mario Puzo, The Godfather.  His battles with Paramount executives are by now the stuff of legend.  The Godfathercreated a sensation upon release, altering the course of his career.   Its equally successful follow-up, The Godfather, Part II, is credited with starting an industry-wide trend by making sequels respectable---and immensely profitable.  The Godfather, Part III (1990),made almost 20 years later, continued the tradition. In between the two gangster epics, Coppola made The Conversation (1974) from his original screenplay.  It is an off-beat quasi-thriller about wiretapping and responsibility which endures as one of his most admired and influential pictures.

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In 1976, Coppola began Apocalypse Now, financing the Vietnam War epic himself.  Almost everything that could go wrong did:  star Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack; co-star Marlon Brando showed up grotesquely overweight; a typhoon destroyed the sets.  Shooting stopped…then re-started and the budget skyrocketed, delaying the film’s release until 1979.  Stylistically, Apocalypse Now was so unusual, especially for a war film, that critics were divided.  Nonetheless, its box office was entirely respectable and, over time, hugely successful.  Apocalypse Now has come to occupy a very special place in the annals of American movie-making, influencing two generations of directors across the globe.  When, in 2002, Coppola added footage for a new version dubbed Apocalypse Now Redux, critics were rhapsodic.   The 1980s brought about a radical change in Coppola’s career parabola.  Desiring more independence as well as an electronically modern filmmaking facility, he bought Hollywood General Studios on Las Palmas and renamed it “Zoetrope Studios.”  Production immediately began on Hammett, directed by Wim Wenders, and soon thereafter on One From the Heart, an innovative musical. But cost over-runs and public squabbles with distributors incited an avalanche of negative publicity which deleteriously affected reception to each film.  Coppola then made two Oklahoma-based youth pictures, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish.  Though The Outsiders enjoyed considerable commercial success, it wasn’t enough to pay the bills of the studio.  Ownership of the facility passed into the hands of creditors and Coppola returned to Northern California.  

            *

The second half of the 1980s constituted a period of evaluation and re-generation. Coppola and Eleanor found solace by helping raise their late son’s daughter, GianCarla.  His Napa Valley winery was expanded and Coppola directed four features.  As a new decade commenced, Coppola was in the spotlight once again:  The Godfather, Part III (1990), garnered 7 Oscar nominations, including one for him as Best Director. Dracula (1992) snared 4 Oscar nominations, winning for Best Costume Design, Sound Effects Editing and Make-Up.  On Jack he filled the slot on a Disney and Robin Williams production searching for a director.  He wanted very much to work with Williams, as he felt he was a genius.  The Rainmaker, starring Matt Damon, introduced him to the new generation of actors and had healthy returns at the box office. Now Coppola was ready to make his dream project, Megalopolis, based upon his original screenplay.  It was an optimistic, even idealistic, story about the creation of a modern-day utopia in the middle of New York City, ambitious in both subject matter and scope.  It would require stars and outside financing.  Though the script wasn’t quite ready, he was eager to do some preliminary shooting, and was in Brooklyn with a cameraman in the summer of 2001 when the Twin Towers were struck.  “All of a sudden, the world was eating itself up,” he recalls.  The new dystopian reality would require extensive rewriting of Megalopolis.  This he stoically undertook without ever  being quite satisfied.  Too, he was discouraged by the ever-changing movie business which relegated drama to the small screen.  Coppola was perplexed and uncertain of direction until, in 2005, he read Youth Without Youth, an allegory about an aging professor who becomes young again thanks to a bolt of lightning.  His spirits soared.  “I can make this,” he said, and he did.  

FILMOGRAPHY

Dementia 13 (1961)

You’re a Big Boy Now (1967)  Writers Guild nomination, Best Written American Comedy. 

Finian’s Rainbow (1966) Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

The Rain People (1970) Best Feature, San Sebastian Film Festival

The Godfather (1972)   11 Academy Award nominations:   Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, 3 Supporting Actors, Costume Design, Sound, Editing and Musical Score.   Oscar (with Mario Puzo) for

Best Adapted Screenplay.   Won Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture & Screenplay.

The Conversation (1974) 3 Academy Award nominations:   Best Picture, Screenplay, Sound.   Won Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or.  Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture & Screenplay.

The Godfather, Part II (1974) 11 Academy Award nominations:   Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, 4 Supporting Actors, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Dramatic Score.  Won 6 Oscars including

Best Picture, Director, Screenplay.   Golden Globe awards for Best Motion Picture, Director,

Actor Musical Score and Screenplay.

Apocalypse Now (1979) 8 Academy Award nominations:  Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound, Editing. Oscar for Cinematography and Sound

Editing.   Won Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or.  Won Golden Globe for Best Musical Score,

with Carmine Coppola.  Grammy nomination for Best Album of Original Score.  Directors

Guild of America award.  

One From the Heart (1980) Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score.

The Outsiders (1981)

Rumble Fish (1981) FIPRESCI Prize; OCIC Award San Sebastián Film Festival

Gardens of Stone (1985)

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

3 Academy Award nominations:  Best Actress, Cinematography, Costume Design, Golden

Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture (Comedy/Musical), Actress.

The Cotton Club (1986) Golden Globe nomination, Best Motion Picture.

 Tucker: The Man and His Dreams (1985)

The Godfather, Part III (1990) 7 Academy Award nominations:  Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Song.  Directors Guild of America nomination.

Dracula (1992) 4 Academy Award nominations:  Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound Effects Editing, Makeup.  Oscars for Make-up, Costume Design & Sound Effects Editing..

Jack (1996)

The Rainmaker  (1997) Nominated for USC  Scripter Award with John Grisham

Youth Without Youth (2007)

Tetro (2009)