PRESS KIT © Jakub Konopásek © Jakub design graphic Jiras, © Pavel photo PRESSKIT FORMAN VS. FORMAN

Czech Republic, France, 2019 78 min

Directors: Helena Třeštíková, Jakub Hejna Scriptwriter: Helena Třeštíková Editor: Jakub Hejna Sound Designer: Richard Müller Producers: Kateřina Černá (NEGATIV FILM PRODUCTIONS), Christine Camdessus (ALEGRIA PRODUCTIONS), Alena Müllerová (CZECH TELEVISION), Madeleine Avramoussis (ARTE G.E.I.E.)

The film was made with the financial support of the Czech Film Fund, CNC, PROCIREP and ANGOA. The film was co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union and the film incentives program by the Czech Film Fund.

World premiere: Cannes Film Festival 2019

SYNOPSIS

„I don‛t know what I‛ve discovered about myself. I‛ve discovered that I enjoy doing what I do, that I enjoy telling stories.‟ Miloš Forman the artist. Miloš Forman the man. A filmmaker decorated with Oscars for Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo‛s Nest. At the same time, a charismatic adventurer with the courage to question himself. His experience with a totalitarian regime bestowed him with the theme of the conflict of an individual with institutions which he kept successfully developing in his American films. At the same time, he never stopped searching for a place where he would feel free. The Forman vs. Forman documentary by directors Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna outlines the journey of the life of the most famous Czech filmmaker on which blows of fate blended with strokes of fortune, personal searching and fumbling. The film is a collage of rare private and official archives, and autobiographic memories narrated by the filmmaker‛s son Petr Forman.

„I‛m moved by every photograph of Miloš I see, the more so by a beautiful documentary which takes us through the entirety of his incredible life. Fingers crossed the film does well around the world!‟

Martina Formanová, Miloš Forman‛s wife Helena Třeštíková *1949, Praha

Helena graduated in the documentary directing program at FAMU. Since 1974, she has made over 50 documentaries. She focuses mostly on human relationships and social issues, and specializes in time- lapse documentaries in which she follows her protagonists over an extended period of time. Helena is one of the most successful Czech documentarists. She won the main competition at the Karlovy Vary Inter- national Film Festival twice (1998 - Sladké století / The Sweet Century; 2015 - Mallory). In 2010, Helena‛s Katka won the Czech Lion and her René triumphed at the 2008 European Film Awards. Helena co-founded the Film & Sociology Foundation (Nadace film & sociologie, 1994) and the Man And Time Foundation (Nadace člověk a čas, 1994). In 2007, she shortly held the position of the Minister of Culture.

Jakub Hejna *1976, Praha

Editor and director. In 2001, Jakub started his own film studio called Young-Film. He was the editor of many of Helena Třeštíková‛s successful documentaries (Strnadovi, Mallory, Katka, René) and edited also feature films (Fair Play, 2014, directed by Andrea Sedláčková; Dukla 61, 2018, directed by David Ondříček). He debuted as a director with the Divadlo Svoboda (Theatre Svoboda) documentary about his grandfather, stage designer Josef Svoboda. With Helena Třeštíková, he co-directed the Zkáza krásou (Doomed Beauty, 2016) documentary about the life of actress Lída Baarová.

FILMMAKERS’ APPROACH

Helena Třeštíková: Miloš Forman was a crucial figure in my life. I loved his films since I was a girl. I lived in the center of Prague and there was almost a dozen cinemas in our neighborhood. I saw all the fairy tales and all the socialist films for children and the youths. When I was 13, a miracle happened: I saw Audition (Konkurs). It changed my world. Suddenly, the life on screen was just like the life I knew in reality. The feeling that movies were about some different, better world than mine was gone. Suddenly, I realized that film didn‛t have to create an illusion and instead, it could express a truth about life! To me, that was a crucial discovery. I fell in love with the films of the Czech New Wave and started dreaming of making films myself. To me, these films were a touch of freedom and became part of my feelings and emotions which later formed me, helped me find my own face, my own identity. If it weren’t for Miloš Forman, I would’ve never become a filmmaker. TŘEŠTÍKOVÁ VS. HEJNA: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CO-DIRECTORS

What was working on a biographical documentary of Miloš Forman like?

Helena Třeštíková: From the very start, we knew that Forman vs. Forman would be a comprehensive biographical portrait. It had to be comprehen- sible to both Czechs and foreigners. We wanted it to be understood even by people who weren’t familiar with Forman’s films and those unaware of the historical context. The fact that Forman was not only an important figure but also an exceptionally charis- matic storyteller was an advantage.

Jakub Hejna: We managed to get archive footage that wasn’t seen by many people before. We have footage from the 1968 Cannes festival in which Forman is standing in his swimsuit on a beach musing about the importance of freedom. At the last moment, we got our hands on footage from the making of The Firemen‛s Ball (Hoří, má panenko!). We had almost finished our film when we received the 30-minute recording as a bonus to something else from Sweden. We tore down the whole setup and reworked it so that we could incorporate this new, absolutely unique footage!

Helena Třeštíková: We spent two months editing the film intensively. Then we took a break, went searching for extra footage and returned to the editing room. Getting some distance from your work is incredibly important to restore the instincts we gradually lose when we‛re immersed in the film every day. It was great we had no limit on the number of days we could spend in the editing room. We had enlightened producers who understood that we needed to take our time with the film.

How much archive footage did you have?

Helena Třeštíková: We worked with around a hundred items and ended up using around seventy of them. They were all kinds of materials. We had professionally excellent documentaries by Věra Chytilová and Jaromil Jireš. Chytilová pretty much made Forman put on his paja- mas and go to the Chelsea hotel, almost the same room where he spent a year and a half of his life! He‛s recalling his first Christ- mas in the USA while rolling in pillows there. It‛s much juicier than having him say it as a talking head.

Jakub Hejna: We wanted to use the most beautiful shots. But sometimes, powerful things were said in the standard TV archival footage. In those cases, we only used the sound and took the images from elsewhere. Often, statements in Czech and English are inter- spersed. It‛s a complex collage.

You’ve been cooperating as a director and an editor for many years. How do you complement each other as co-directors?

Jakub Hejna: It‛s a dialog of two artists, a search for the right message. I can feel what Helena finds important that the film should reflect and she can tell when I get stuck on something. I focus on the visuals and comprehensibility and Helena concentrates on the content. She comes to the editing room well prepared with underlined parts of statements so that we don‛t have to go through heaps of ballast. Helena Třeštíková: Jakub is very fast and skillful, so we manage to try a lot of possibilities. Then we immediately see which one works best.

What difficulties did you have to overcome?

Helena Třeštíková: Jakub took it very hard when we had to shorten excerpts from Forman‛s films!

Jakub Hejna: I wanted to honor their structure. He made the scenes with a certain timing. Especially the films from the 1960s have a completely different tempo than what we‛re used to today. But we needed to save time. To me, the question was: can I edit this excerpt? Now I know that in the best interest of the overall pacing the answer is probably yes. We usually shortened the dialog.

What new things did you discover about Miloš Forman in the editing room?

Helena Třeštíková: I was surprised to see what a fantastic storyteller he was. He had a huge acting talent which was also why he was so great at working with non-actors in his Czech period. He was able to show them the emotions in a way that made them understand what he wanted them to feel.

Jakub Hejna: I‛m fascinated by the turns of fate he experienced. His fortune and misfortune. His parents in a concentration camp, life-changing coincidences which were probably no coincidences at all and him being able to take advantage of them and turn them into a nar- rative of an individual‛s never-ending fight for freedom against institutions. He elaborated on that theme in his American films as well.

Apart from the theme of the fight for freedom, your film also strongly emphasizes Forman’s emotions. What did you think about his questioning himself?

Helena Třeštíková: I like people who question themselves very much, because I‛m an incarnation of self-doubt!

Jakub Hejna: This kind of creative activity is an endless search, an endless uncertainty. Miloš Forman had achieved great success but with every new film, he was starting from scratch. Over and over again. At the same time even though he had doubts, he had to project con- fidence to maintain his authority. We experience this search in the editing room every day, so it clicked very well.

Why is the narrator voiced by Petr Forman, theater artist and Miloš Forman’s son?

Helena Třeštíková: Since the very beginning, I felt his sons‛ voices were the same as their father‛s and I ended up choosing Petr. The narrator‛s text is partially inspired by Miloš Forman‛s autobiography Co já vím? (What do I know?) co-written by Jan Novák. However, there are no direct quotes. We changed the sentences based on our knowledge of Miloš. And Petr made changes of his own: „My dad would never say it like that. He‛d say it this way.‟

The film doesn‛t show all of Forman‛s career, you stop before the end. Why?

Jakub Hejna: In general, it‛s expensive to use excerpts from foreign films but it was our intention to finish with Forman‛s The People vs. Larry Flynt. Our goal wasn‛t to show all his films. It was more important to us to follow the theme of freedom which is very prominent in Larry Flynt. At that time, Miloš Forman found his own inner freedom. To us, that was the natural conclusion.

MILOŠ FORMAN QUOTES FROM THE FILM

„Freedom. I don’t know what freedom is, really. It’s a funny word. It’s a word made out of clay. Because everybody moulds it the way so it fits. The only thing I know where freedom is and where freedom is not... Freedom is only where you can publicly and loudly doubt its presence.“

„The only feeling of superiority a film maker has... He’s forced to play God. Because he’s forced to make decisions. Hundreds of decisions every day. And you have to judge yourself if you have time to say: “Just a moment, give me a second. I’m not sure.” Or when the time pressure, the money pressure is so that: “Ok, this, this, this, this “ – that’s when you feel God. When you are relying on your instincts. But when you sit in the screening room your “Godness” is shrinking very often.“

“The happiness doesn’t exist. Happiness is too abstract. You know, I’m so much looking forward to something which will make me happy. The moment I have it I’m disappointed. The way to get it was much more... gave me much more excitement, much more happiness than the actual goal when you get it, when you get there. So I guess the pursue of... to be free to pursue the happiness, I think that’s the ultimate happiness.”

„That’s a good conflict there when an individual gets into a conflict with some institution. There I feel a very, very strong compassion. Because I know that that individual needs my compassion. And needs compassion of all of us because through this compassion we are protecting ourselves. I think this is the major conflict of human existence, you know? So I guess this is what you call social, or meaning of what we are doing.“

„I know that I have nothing to do and I would love to make a movie. All I want is to find a book or a script and I am reading, I am reading until one day I find a story and I am excited I can’t stop reading that book. I want to do that book!“ MILOŠ FORMAN

Few life stories involve as much fortune and misfortune as that of Miloš Forman. He was born on Feb. 18, 1932 in Čáslav, Czecho- slovakia, which was a town of a population which would fit into a single New York skyscraper. At the age of 10, he lost both parents who died in a concentration camp. He grew up in a children‛s home and a boarding school for survivors of World War II where he became friends with his younger schoolmate Václav Havel and was in charge of the room they shared. He wanted to study theater but only passed audition for screenwriting at FAMU. He debuted as director with a story film called Konkurs (Audition, 1963). In the same year, his black comedy Černý Petr (Black Peter) premiered and won at the Lo- carno festival. His next films were Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde, 1965) and Hoří, má panenko (The Firemen‛s Ball, 1967) in which he juxtaposed individual freedom with the rigidity of the society. This theme stayed with him for the rest of his life. The Firemen‛s Ball was selected for the main competition at the Cannes festival but the festival was canceled by the filmmakers as an expression of solidarity with protesting French students. After the Soviet invasion of 1968, Miloš Forman moved to the USA where he stayed at the famous Chelsea hotel in New York. His American debut was Taking Off (1971), a feature film about parents searching for their rebelling children. Although the film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes festival, it didn’t appeal to the Ameri- can audience. Forman realized that living in a foreign culture, he could no longer be his own screenwriter and started adapting books or making films based on real biographies in which he found his theme of the conflict of an individual against institutions. After working on a sports documentary called Visions of Eight (1973), Forman adapted Kesey‛s novel entitled One Flew Over The Cuckoo‛s Nest (1975) about a criminal trying to evade imprisonment by feigning insanity. The film won five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay) and at the Oscars ceremony, Miloš Forman was accompanied by his two sons, Petr and Matěj, who had been growing up with their mother, singer Věra Křesadlová, in Prague until then. Forman subsequently shot a musical entitled Hair (1979), and a thriller called Ragtime (1981). In 1984, Forman came to Prague to shoot Amadeus, a duel of two musical composers. The picture won eight Oscars including Best Film and Best Director. Forman concluded the 1980s with a historical thriller entitled Valmont (1989) which was an adaptation of the same story as Ste- phen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons which enjoyed a much better reception. Miloš Forman returned to the limelight in the late 1990s with the biopics entitled The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999). The former won the Berlinale and the latter won the Berlinale’s best director award. Miloš Forman’s last film was Goya’s Ghosts (2006).

REVISITING THE ARCHIVES

Many documentaries were made about Miloš Forman at various stages of his life. Forman vs. Forman maps the journey of his life, his searching, fumbling, losses, discoveries and understanding. Directors Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna composed a layered portrait edited from numerous rare archive materials. They used photographs from Forman’s life, magazine and news sources from Czechoslovakia as well as the United States. There are excerpts from Forman’s films and scenes from their making comple- mented by fragments from documentaries by Věra Chytilová (Chytilová versus Forman, 1981) and Jaromil Jireš (Milos Forman – Das Kuckucksei, 1985) and, last but not least, private family footage. A COMMENT BY FORMAN’S SON

The narrator in the film is voiced by Petr Forman, theater artist and Miloš’s son. “When they came to me with the voiceover, it was a bit of a shock. You don’t just say: ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ Those were my dad’s words spoken in first person. My dad had a naturally beautiful, big voice. And he was such a good storyteller! His stories would be boring if anyone else was telling them but listening to him was just as much fun as watching his movies. Knowing that I would be speaking on his behalf gave me a lot to think about. But I didn’t really spend much time preparing for the job, because it wouldn’t sound authentic anymore.”

To Petr Forman, the film is personal. “But if I forget that he’s my dad, the film is a thorough take on his life. Some of the things he says in the film are surprising. When people see success, they often think everything is rosy. But in the film, dad speaks very openly about some of the more difficult parts of his life. He did succeed and experienced the limelight everybody dreams of but he had also been through many challenging moments and situations which you may not have expected.”

Petr Forman notices the film’s pronounced authenticity. “The film shows my dad as I knew him, what he was really like. Not only when he was working but also his candidness you see in the film. It isn’t the kind of documentary that only shows his achieve- ments. It goes beyond that and tells you about him as a person.”

CANNES? CLASSICS!

The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most prestigious festivals in the world and its history goes back to 1946. Every year, twenty films by both renowned masters and fresh talents compete for the Palme d’Or. The associated gigantic film market further adds to the importance of the event. Milos Forman competed there twice: in 1968, he brought The Firemen’s Ball but the festival was ended prematurely in solidarity with the protesting students. In 1971, Forman won the Grand Prix, the second highest Cannes award, for his English-language debut Taking Off. His Visions of Eight (1973) and his musical Hair (1979) were screened outside the main competition. In 2016, the festival screened a restored version of Valmont and last year, the Cannes beach cinema showed The Firemen’s Ball on its 50th anniversary.

Since 2004, the Cannes Classics section has replaced the traditional filmmakers’ retrospectives and is a part of the main official program. It shows restored gems of world cinema and unique documentaries related to filmmaking.

This year in the Cannes Classics section, the festival has payed a “final tribute” to Milos Forman. The program included the world premiere of Helena Trestikova and Jakub Hejna’s Forman vs. Forman documentary. Thus, this film appeared in the exclusive selection of only five documentaries chosen from a large number of submissions. Its inclusion in the main program is even more exceptional due to the fact that no other new Czech film of living author has been selected for the Cannes main program since 1994. This year’s tribute to Milos Forman also included the screening of a restored version of Loves of a Blonde.

PRESS & SALES CONTACT

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