MILOŠ FORMAN 90
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 9-22
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
Upon the death of master Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman in 2018 at the age of eighty-six, film curator and producer Irena Kovarova wrote in Czech Film magazine, “When Miloš Forman was a young boy, he and his parents dressed up in their Sunday best and headed over to the cinema in Čáslav for the future filmmaker’s first moviegoing experience. They took their seats and the opera Bartered Bride began on screen — as a silent film. In Forman’s telling of this story, he would always pause when delivering the paradox of this moment. Then he would continue, revealing that to his great delight, the audience, knowing the opera by heart, began to sing along. From that moment on, cinema was forever fixed in his mind as a communal experience. Miloš Forman was a remarkable storyteller. For the screen and in person. You’d hear him tell the same stories from his career on many occasions, but you’d never see him bored with his own words. They were perfectly crafted and he was incredibly generous with his audience. He knew the story worked and he was there to bring his listeners joy with his delivery, which in turn warmed his heart. He was a man larger than life: his baritone voice strong, and his r’s rolled and resounding. One believed when in his presence that his first love was for people, and he made sure that everyone around him could feel it.”
Miloš Forman celebration at Film Forum takes off with Taking Off
Kovarova is serving as the consultant on the Film Forum series “Miloš Forman 90,” celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the director’s birth in Caslav. The two-week festival consists of all twelve of his feature films, from 1964’s Black Peter to 2006’s Goya’s Ghosts, in addition to several documentaries (Czechoslovakia, 1967) and Alfréd Radok’s 1956 Old Man Motor Car, in which Forman makes a brief appearance. Radok was a major influence on Forman; the two went on to work together at the multimedia theater company Laterna Magika.
The series boasts such beloved classics as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ragtime, and Amadeus in addition to Man on the Moon, Hair, and Valmont. Kovarova will introduce the September 15 showing of Audition, the September 17 screenings of Old Man Motor Car The Firemen’s Ball, and the September 20 screening of Věra Chytilová’s 1982 documentary, Chytilová versus Forman. Producer Michael Hausman will introduce the 1968 counterculture favorite Taking Off (starring Buck Henry!) on September 9 at 8:30; screenwriter Michael Weller will introduce Ragtime on September 11 at 3:40; screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski will introduce the 6:00 screening of Man on the Moon on September 12 and, on the same day, participate in a Q&A following the 8:30 screening of The People vs. Larry Flynt; producer Paul Zaentz will introduce the September 16 screening of Amadeus and the September 19 screening of Goya’s Ghosts.