Karlovy Vary Film Festival to Salute Ken Loach, James Newton Howard

Czech Republic festival will also present a restored version of the Oscar-winning film “The Shop on Main Street”

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
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Director Ken Loach, composer James Newton Howard, director Kenji Mizoguchi and cinematographer Jiří Brdečka will be the subject of tributes at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, KVIFF organizers announced on Tuesday.

The annual festival, which takes place in the spa town outside of Prague, Czech Republic, will also premiere a restored version of Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ 1966 film “The Shop on Main Street,” which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Those tributes are among the first batch of programs announced for the festival, which will run from June 30 through July 9.

Howard, whose film scores include “The Sixth Sense,” “Pretty Woman” and “Batman Begins,” will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema. He will also conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in a world premiere live performance of music from “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” on June 30 during KVIFF’s opening ceremony concert in front of the Hotel Thermal.

The concert will also include Carl Davis conducting additional film music, much of it from the James Bond films.

British director Loach will be honored along with his longtime screenwriter, Paul Laverty. Their collaborations include “My Name Is Joe,” “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and “I, Daniel Blake.”

The late Japanese director Mizoguchi, whose seminal films include “The Life of Oharu,” “Ugetsu” and “Sansho the Bailiff,” will be saluted with a selection of 10 of his films, curated by British critic Tony Rayns.

The festival will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Czech cinematographer Brdečka by screening the feature “Lemonade Joe,” as well as a selection of his short films.

In additional programming, the Karlovy Vary President’s Award for Artistic Contribution will go to writer-director Václav Vorlíček, whose films include “Who Wants to Kill Jessie?,” “You Are a Widow, Sir!” and “The Girl on the Broomstick.”

And on the festival’s opening night, a new KVIFF trailer will be unveiled starring Czech actor Josef Somr. Like many of Karlovy Vary’s celebrated trailers, which have starred the likes of Helen Mirren, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law and Milos Forman, this year’s was directed by Ivan Zachariáš.

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