Citizen Havel cinema success
The documentary film about Vaclav Havel (directed by Pavel Koutecký and Miroslav Janek) has now been seen by 100.000 viewers in the Czech Republic. The film was released in January 2008, runs 119 minutes but can now also be seen in a director’s cut version that runs twenty minutes longer.
I had the chance to watch a rough cut version back in September last year, which I wrote about for this blog – title ”Documentary on Vaclav Havel”. Here follows a brief excerpt:
The film is wonderful being the result of 12 years of shooting by Pavel Koutecky who died last year in a tragic accident. The film has been completed by Mira Janek, and covers sequences from the life of Havel when president until the moment he steps down and leaves the castle in Prague. Private life and official life… A film full of humour about a gentle man, who – as he says himself – is unwilling to conform to the stereotypes…
Apart from the joyful meeting with a man of great modest charisma, the film gives you an inside to important moments in Czech politics when EU is to be the reality for the former communist country.