Four Lions wins award at Karlovy Vary

[Boycey]

First of all, sorry if it's too many split topics. Didn't want to dump it in the British Screenings thread...

Anyway, Four Lions has picked up the Independent Camera award at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic:

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/1719-45th-karlovy-vary-iff-2010-awards/

And some photos of Mr Morris picking up his award here:

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/foto/343-non-statutory-juries-awards-ceremony/

For those of you who don't know, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival is actually one of the biggest film festivals in the world (it's an 'A-List' one that puts it into the same category as Berlin, Cannes etc).

The award itself is one of the more minor festival awards (as it says "This year at KVIFF, Czech Television has for the seventh time awarded the Independent Camera prize for the best film from the Forum of Independents") but it's still a good coup for the film to get an award at such a prestigious festival.

I was actually there but left a couple of days before Morris himself showed up, curse my luck. However, know quite a few people who saw/going to see the film so might try and get and report on the reactions - would be interesting to see how our Continental European cousins react to it....

[weekender]

That's a fucking awesome shirt Morris is wearing, I want one.

[Neil]

Well deserved.  It's lovely to see it winning an award in the Czech Republic and LA, because it's obviously completely meritocratic, rather than a case of people being bowled over by Morris' reputation. 

During the Q&A's, he's been saying that the idea for whatever he wants to do next will determine the format, but this recognition the film is getting should at least ensure much less trouble getting funded for future film projects.  I'd imagine he'll be able to get bigger budgets too, right? 

[weekender]

It's lovely to see it winning an award in the Czech Republic and LA, because it's obviously completely meritocratic, rather than a case of people being bowled over by Morris' reputation.

Do we know it's completely meritocratic?  I don't know much about these film festivals, couldn't it be possible that they're full of a lot of the same judging personnel from the film world?  Or a bunch of pretentious cocks?

I'm not saying they are or aren't, I just don't have any evidence one way or the other, and I'm not sure you do either.

That doesn't mean you're wrong of course, and I'm not making this point just to be annoying.  I'm genuinely interested into the judging decisions that have been made by various film festivals, especially those overseas.  I'm just not sure we can automatically assume they're meritocratic.  The idea of some independent Czechs deciding that Four Lions is a work of art worth recognising is, to my mind, very interesting insofar as they presumably have some sort of view on the subject matter (What is the subject matter?  Omar?  Terrorism?).

During the Q&A's, he's been saying that the idea for whatever he wants to do next will determine the format, but this recognition the film is getting should at least ensure much less trouble getting funded for future film projects.  I'd imagine he'll be able to get bigger budgets too, right?

I think that's one of the things I admire most about Morris - the idea comes first, then he thinks about how best to communicate it. 

I imagine the available budget may still depend on the initial idea though - Morris's reputation for PAEDOGEDDEN probably still hangs in people's minds, despite the fact that his body of work is so much more than the BES.

My initial guess is that because Four Lions hasn't offended the Muslim community as much as people thought it would, the film and television community might be more open to Morris's ideas and therefore the funding might be easier.   I have no evidence for any of this.

[Boycey]

The thing is that festival juries are often made up of loads of different personalities and peoples who could one year be meritocratic and the next year a bunch of pretentious cocks. It simply depends on who is actually asked to be on it (I have been on a fair number of juries in my time and wouldn't dare to hazard a guess on which side of the fence I stand). The criteria will also be different from festival to festival about what they want and what they are looking to win, as well as the fact that can be many different juries.

This year Karlovy Vary has approx 10 different juries including an international comp, documentary comp and there's even an ecumenical jury. Looking at the catalogue, the Independent Camera Jury is a bunch of Czech Names I don't recognise, so I reckon it is indeed some people from Czech TV who said that was their favourite film in that section. And what's their view of the films? Well, just that it deserved to win out of all the films in the section. As I say, in the grand scheme of Karlovy Vary it's a minor award. But still saying you've won something at Karlovy Vary is not only a good marketing tool but personally might be quite gratifying.

But what Neil says is, I think, somewhat true. One of the things is that Morris comes with no baggage to many people outside of the UK. And the screening in Karlovy Vary wasn't a big premiere like Sundance or the like. So Morris was there as 'just another filmmaker' and the film was one of more than 250 screened over the 10 days. So - as far as I could tell anyway - the majority of people going to see it were doing so because they were intrigued by the film (which there was a good chance they had not have heard of until the festival) and it's synopsis in the catalogue. As an aside, it's always interesting because, despite it's major status, Karlovy Vary really does cater to a wide (and often young) public audience: it's not all film execs lauding it up all over the place.

As I mentioned, I am currently getting reactions from some of my colleagues who are not from the UK. An Estonian crtitc friend of mine mentioned that she she really wants to watch it again as laughing Czechs made it difficult to get all the dialogue...