20/10/2005

Czech film may be suffering from lack of sufficient state support at home, but this does little or nothing to harm their reputation abroad. Recently Petr Nikolaev’s A Little Piece of Heaven (Kousek nebe) won the best film award at the 7th Flimmer in Norrköping, Sweden, from September 30th to October 9th. The film is based on Jiri Stransky’s book “Happiness” (“Stesti”).Ironically it was another film which used that same title, Bohdan Slama’s Something Like Happiness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bohdan Slama
interview: Pavel Strnad
film profile] (Stesti), which had won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian, in September.

A Little Piece of Heaven is an optimistic approach to a sad story; a pair of young people meet in a communist prison in the 1950’s and falls in love. It was co-produced by Czech TV and Luxor Films and distributed by Falcon. Sales are handled by Telexport. Although Flimmer is not one of Europe’s top festival gatherings, the award will once more raise the profile of Czech film abroad.
Slama’s film is already careering in just that. After San Sebastian it also won the main prize in Athens; it was then showcased in Reykjavic and New York and it will be traveling to Cottbus, Budapest and Bratislava Film Festivals at the end of this year. Meanwhile it is showing in yet another prestigious industry event, The Times bfi London Film Festival, 19 October – 3 November. Along Slama’s work three other Czech productions are presented in the Cinema Europa section; The City of the Sun (o.t. Slunecni stat) by Martin Sulik, Shark in the Head (o.t. Zralok v hlave) by Maria Prochazkova and Wrong Side Up (o.t. Príbehy obycejného sílenství) by Petr Zelenka.