Last Year at Karlovy Vary: A Remembrance of Czech Actor and Festival Chief Jiri Bartoska

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2 days ago

I first met actors Jiri Bartoska – who died Thursday at the age of 78 – and Leonardo DiCaprio at the same time, at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 31 summers ago.
The encounter was memorable for all three of us, I suspect. Leo was a teenager, just beginning his march to fame and glory, and Karlovy Vary was his first film festival, also attended by his German mother Irmelin and his German grandparents. He climbed into his grandparents laps and I have that snap eternally imprinted in my memory banks of my favorite movie business moments.
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That fortnight in the Bohemian sun led to a marriage and a daughter for me, but it also led to a fortuitous journalistic adventure that I like to think benefited Variety's readers as well.
I had just begun my 32 seasons as an editor at the magazine. Jiri had just begun his 31 seasons as the leader of the newly privatized KV fest. Along with his artistic director, the noted film journalist/critic Eva Zaoralova and his business partner, Slovak producer Rudolf Biermann, Jiri led a formerly state-run enterprise out of financial straits into the new dawn of Czech capitalism. Sponsors climbed aboard his train and Karlovy Vary became an essential stop on the festival calendar.
By the turn of the century, there were young, dynamic film lovers who Jiri came to rely on as he took sole control of the festival and Zaoralova retired.
Today, two of those Czech boys of decades ago, Karel Och and Krystof Mucha, are men who serve respectively as the fest's program director and producer and they've steered the ship through the 21st century. They've been ably aided by Czech VIP coordinator Tatiana Detlofson, and in the past decades the team welcomed Oscar winners, major filmmakers and stars.
Today, this trio is mourning the loss of their boss, with Och remembering his tenure under Bartoska as 'a quarter of a century close to a human being with an incredible aura and a piercing sense of humor. The void he leaves is immense.'
Detlofson assesses Bartoska's impact as 'a giant in Czech cinema… our Robert Redford. Not only was he a brilliant actor but he was a cultural force of nature who built one of the biggest and most important film festivals in the world. He will be missed by the whole Czech nation.'
In Mucha's view, Bartoska was both 'a man who saved the Karlovy Vary Film Festival' and 'a great actor with enormous charisma.'
Mucha adds: 'Jiri was friends with legends such as Milos Forman, Vaclav Havel and (former American Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright, but he was kind to anyone he met in everyday life. I thank God I had the chance to meet him all those years ago when I was a 22 year-old student and had the chance to learn from him through all these years.'
Perhaps their youth, matched by Bartoska's vision, is the secret of Karlovy Vary's status as a kind of annual 'Film Woodstock' in Eastern Europe.
From almost the beginning of Bartoska's stewardship, the festival welcomed youthful film fans by the tens of thousands, and they pitched tents, slept on hotel room floors and packed dance clubs for all night raves after days and nights of moviegoing.
If Cannes is frantic and elite, Berlin Teutonic and Venice pricey, KV is easy-going, laid back, egalitarian, a true young people's fest.
I may have stumbled upon Bartoska's fest long past my dance club days, but the casual spa town atmosphere lent itself to countless memorable encounters that were vital to my education and growth as a film journalist.
Where else could you drop in on Abbas Kiarostami for a casual chat, or wind up singing Coasters songs at dinner with Morgan Freeman? Or have Michael Douglas beckon me to his room at the splendid Hotel Pupp to give Variety a scoop about his latest film? Or spent hours getting to know Pythons Terry Jones and John Cleese, American indie auteur Gus Van Sant, legendary thesps such as Ben Gazzara, Rod Steiger, L.Q. Jones and my SoCal hero Danny Trejo? Conviviality and love of film has been a hallmark of Bartoska's great presentation and celebration of film.
Mel Gibson held an audience of 1400 young Czech film fans entranced with 'Apocalypto' and John Boorman brought his 70s macho American culture masterpiece 'Deliverance' to an equally astonished crowd who packed that same theater, inside the neo-brutalist concrete edifice of the Hotel Thermal.
Jiri created a framework that ignited the imaginations of the young and fed the hunger for meaningful cinematic encounters with film lovers of all ages and nationalities.
But a bit of pre-Jiri KV is in order.
Karlovy Vary, historically one of the first film festivals in Europe, was where you went for the new Iron Curtain cinema and it alternated annually with the Moscow Film Festival in that mission.
That may have meant a lot back in the days of the Prague Spring and the Czech New Wave filmmakers such as Milos Forman, Ivan Passer, Jiri Menzel, et al, but by 1994, the '60s were a long time ago and there was not so much action in the East. The film world had been energized by the Germans in the 70s and the 90s were abuzz with new Asian talents and those blazing American indies named Soderbergh, Tarantino, Lynch, the Coens.
Jiri's path forward with a big sprawling, expensive festival deep in the shadows of Cannes, Berlin and Venice was fraught with economic hurdles and a daunting search for purpose and relevance in 1994. Remarkably, the KV team led by Jiri managed almost immediately to get on the radar of both Hollywood and the rest of world cinema.
Variety played a not insignificant role in this development as it was invited to have its critics and journalists program an official section of the festival, highlighting the new European filmmakers who were matching and surpassing the Americans in creativity and cinematic ambition. From Tom Tykwer to Jessica Hausner, Nicolas Winding Refn to Catherine Corsini, Variety's 'Europe Now' section played to packed crowds and connected the publication to exciting emerging talents, all thanks to Jiri's team and their vision for the future.
I can't claim to have been part of Jiri's inner circle of friends. Looking back over the decades of attendance at what I view as his creation – the modern KV fest era – I only ever saw him in a tuxedo or golfing attire. How would I try to describe his suave and easy swagger?
Imagine Sky Du Mont as the elegant Sandor Szavost, champagne flute in hand, wooing Nicole Kidman in 'Eyes Wide Shut,' and you get a sense of Bartoska's personal style and Cary Grantish charm.
Jiri was Karlovy Vary's secret weapon, because the moment a movie star such as Sharon Stone, Jude Law or Renee Zellweger stepped into the Bohemian sun, they were greeted by an infinitely charming movie star who shone every bit as brightly as his guests, and one whose passion for cinema was a match for even his grandest guests.
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