Raoul Servais to be awarded Dragon in Cracow

At the opening ceremony of the 47th Cracow Film Festival (31st May, 2007) the Honorary Prize, the Dragon of Dragons for Lifetime Achievement will go to Raoul Servais, the acclaimed Belgian animated film director of brilliant works like The False Note (De Valse Noot, 1963, pictured) . Now 79 years old and still working, he accepted the news with great joy, admitting it was a big honour to receive such an award at one of the major film festivals across the world, particularly in a country like Poland with renowned filmmakers who gave significant contributions to the world of film animation.

The Dragon of Dragons lifetime achievement award was set up in 1998 in recognition of filmmakers belonging to the fine tradition of documentary and animated films and is presented by the Programme Committee of the Cracow Film Foundation. So far it has been awaraded to: Bohdan Kosiñski, Raymond Depardon, Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles, Kazimierz Karabasz and animated film directors: Jan Lenica, Jan Svankmajer, Stephan and Timothy Quay and Yuri Norstein.

Raoul Servais has been awarded in various film festivals across the world, most notably for his animations Chromophobia (1966), Operation X-70 (1971), Harpya (1979), Taxandria (1994), Nocturnal Butterflies (Papillons de nuit, 1997) and Atraksion (2001).

Read more on Raoul Servais here

Vera Chytilová and her Surreal Paradise

Vera Chytilová has the prestige of being the only female director to emerge in the Prague Spring. Moreover, she was one of the best directors of that era, period. Working with her husband, the cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera, and writer-designer Ester Krumbachová, she directed two of the most inventive films of the Czech New Wave. Daisies (1966)was an avant-garde montage of the destructive antics of two female teenagers which demonstrated that such a film could still be funny while The Fruit of Paradise (1969) used allegory to portray male-female relations using imagery of a remarkable aesthetic beauty.

Because of her excessive approach, Chytilová subsequently found it almost impossible to work following the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968. However, she was to remain in Czechoslovakia working on shelved or unreleased projects.

Read more on Vera Chytilová, followed by my interview with her in London in 2002 at the start of her retrospective, by clicking here.