Screening of Milos Forman movies at the Rainbow Theatre at 7:00pm

(Free entrance)

 

 

October 30 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest

October 31 - Loves of a Blonde

November 1 - Man on the Moon

November 2 - The Firemen ´s Ball

November 3 - Amadeus

 

 

 

 

The Firemen’s Ball / Hoří má panenko (1967, Czechoslovakia)           

Black Comedy, Political Satire          Wednesday, 2^nd November, 7p.m.

Awards: The film was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival.

Director: Miloš Forman

Czech with English Subtitles

The Firemen’s Ball was the last film Forman would make in his native Czechoslovakia and the first film he shot in color.

The firefighter volunteers’ squad in a small town organizes its annual ball in honor of their former chief. They are going to include a big raffle as well as a beauty contest to the program. The ball committee is trying to choose candidates for the beauty contest, but they have trouble finding suitable girls. After many difficulties they manage to herd some candidates, but as the competition begins, the girls change their mind and lock themselves in the bathroom. Members of the committee are trying to get replacement candidates on the stage by force.

Meantime, the displayed raffle prizes start to disappear and the attempt to get them back is not very successful. Soon after the fire alarm sounds as a nearby house of a lonely old man is on fire…

The Czechoslovak Communists of the time perceived the film as an extremely dangerous political allegory depicting the shortcomings and blunders of their regime – and rightly so. The film got theaters at the very end of the Prague Spring era and managed to stay for three weeks – but after the Soviet invasion was immediately banned for the next forty years.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, US)            

Drama                                                                    Sunday, 30^th October, 7p.m.

Awards: Won 5 Oscars*. Another 29 wins & 11 nominations

Director: Miloš Forman

Stars: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito

English with Arabic Subtitles

Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a despot than a nurse.

Randle Patrick McMurphy (Nicholson), who has been sentenced to fairly short prison term, decides to have himself declared insane. He expects to serve the rest of his term free of prison labor and in (comparative) comfort and luxury of a mental institution. However, his ward in the mental institution is run by an unyielding dictator, Nurse Ratched (Fletcher), who has cowed her patients through the institutionalized discipline into dejected submission. McMurphy gets ensnared in a number of power games with Nurse Ratched for the hearts and minds of the patients. All the time, however, the question is just how sane any of the players in the ward actually are…..

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest made Forman one of only 5 directors ever to win the Golden Globe, Director’s Guild, BAFTA and Best Director with Best Picture Oscars for the same movie.  

*Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor, Best Leading Actress, Best Writing

Amadeus – Director’s Cut (1984, US)

Drama, Music, Biography

Award: Won 8 Oscars*. Another 32 wins &13 nominations

Director: Miloš Forman

Writers: Peter Shaffer (original stage play by Peter Shaffer)

Casts: F.Murray Abraham (Antonio Salieri), Tom Hulce (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

English with Arabic Subtitles

It is a cold winter evening as a houseman attempts to rouse his master, former glorified Viennese court composer Antonio Salieri. After unsuccessful knocking, they force Salieri´s bedroom door open and find him on the floor, bleeding from a self-inflicted knife wound.

He is carried to a mental hospital, where his wound is tended, and a priest comes to help him deal with his problems.

The priest asks for the reason of Salieri´s suicide act – and Salieri starts his narration…. the requiem of music, talent, love, hate and ultimate jealousy.

*Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best Writing, Best Art Direction, Best Costumes, Best Sound, Best Makeup, Nominated for Best Cinematography, Best leading Actor (Hulce), Best Editing

Man on the Moon (1999, US)

Biography, Comedy, Drama                                     Tuesday, 1^st November, 7p.m.

Awards: Won Golden Globe. Another 3 wins & 15 nominations

Director: Miloš Forman

Stars: Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito

English with Arabic Subtitles

A film about the life and career of the comedian Andy Kaufman, who was considered one of the most innovative, eccentric and enigmatic performers of his time.

The story traces Kaufman’s steps from childhood through the comedy clubs, and television appearances that made him famous, including his memorable appearances on Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, Fridays, and on the Taxi sitcom, which was popular for viewers but disruptive for Kaufman’s co-stars.

The film pays particular attention to the various inside jokes, scams, put-ons, and happenings for which Kaufman was famous, most significantly his long-running “feud” with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler.

A master at manipulating audiences, Kaufman could generate belly laughs, stony silence, tears or brawls. Whether inviting the audience out for milk and cookies or challenging women to inter-gender wrestling matches, he specialized in creating performances so real that even his close friends were never sure where the truth lay.

 

 

 

Miloš Forman: What doesn’t kill you   (Documentary directed by M.Šmídmajer)

Monday 31^st October, 4 p.m. at The Royal Film Commission Jordan

FILM – SUCCESS – CAREER – DISAPPOINTMENT – FRIENDS – FAMILY – CRUELTY – CHILDHOOD – THE VIRTUE OF POWER – REBELLION – FREEDOM….

These are the basic pillars of this visually spectacular documentary about the life and career of an extraordinary director – Miloš Forman.

Are you expecting a portrait recalling the milestones of Forman’s career and his famous films? Well, you will meet famous personalities and watch some famous events. But above all you will experience a story about cruelty, losing parents and losing sons, about the power of overcoming demons. About the desire to succeed and to be free….

Miloš Forman’s Filmography as Director:

1963        Konkurs / Audition (documentary)

                Černý Petr / Black Peter

1965       Lásky jedné plavovlásky / Loves of a Blonde

1966       Dobře placená procházka / A Well-Paid Walk (TV Movie)

1967        Hoří, má panenko / Firemen´s Ball

1971        Taking Off

1975         One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

1979         Hair

1981         Ragtime

1984         Amadeus

1989         Valmont

1996         The People vs. Larry Flynt

1999         Man on the Moon

2006         Goya´s Ghosts  

 

 

Miloš Forman

 

Orphaned at young age during World War II, Miloš Forman became one of the prominent young directors of the Czech New Wave in the 1960s-the brief period of artistic enlightenment culminating in Prague Spring of 1968, and crushed by the subsequent Soviet’s invasion. Forman fled to America, where he quickly found remarkable success and acclaim as director of award bait like 1975 ´s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1984´s Amadeus.

The Miloš Forman retrospective, beginning this week, is most valuable for including Forman’s internationally acclaimed, but lesser-seen early Czech work. Forman’s films exhibit remarkably mature and coherent storytelling skills and nearly all his movies-regardless of subject matter – are winningly funny.

After tentative early steps in 1963´s Audition and 1964´s Black Peter, Forman created his first masterpiece with Loves of a Blonde in 1965, followed by the black comedy of The Firemen’s Ball in 1967 – the early predecessor of Monty Python grotesque absurdity. Forman´s first American picture, 1971´s Taking Off, indicates the expert fusion of music and cinema that would be put to greater use in the triumphant Amadeus, but it was the comically nihilistic Cuckoo´s Nest that garnered the first heap of Academy Awards. Hair and Ragtime followed in 1979 and 1981, respectively, and Forman then returned to his native Prague to film Amadeus, perhaps the greatest film about music ever made.

After 1989 Valmont, Forman´s version of “Dangerous Liaisons”, he directed two very different biopics – The People vs. Larry Flynt, an inspiriting reflection about freedom of speech, and Man on the Moon, about an avant-garde comedian Andy Kaufman. Lately in Goya´s Ghosts Forman ventured into a historical epic, told through the eyes of celebrated Spanish painter Francisco Goya and set against the backdrop of political turmoil at the end of the Spanish Inquisition. Forman once said that, “All the most important and immediate conflicts in life are between different, equally well-intentioned people’s conception of what the best is.” This conflict of intentions, and sometimes the ruthless tyranny of good intentions, remains the central thesis of Forman’s films.

One of only three living directors who have directed two films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. (The others are Francis Coppola and Clint Eastwood.)