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The Reykjavik International Film Festival proudly announces this years recipient of it's honorary award, director Milos Forman. Forman will visit Reykjavik during the festival and a selection of his work will be shown.
There is little doubt that Milos Forman is one of the world's foremost directors. He's one of only four living directors to have received two Academy Awards as Best Director (the others are Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone og Steven Spielberg), but he claimed them for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1985). He has also directed films such as Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flint, Hair and Valmont, all made after he moved to the USA in the late 60s.
But the films he made earlier in his homeland, then Czechoslovakia, are some just as remarkable. Forman was at the forefront of a significant movement of young czech directors during the 60s when he directed films such as Black Peter (Cerný Petr), Loves of a Blonde (Lásky jedné plavovlásky) and The Firemen's Ball (Horí, má panenko).
Forman was born in 1932, named Jan Tomás Forman. His parents both died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, his father originally sent there for handing out banned books. Censorship was to remain a strong theme in many of his son's works, the best example being his defence of porn king's Larry Flint's right of free speech in The People vs. Larry Flint.
And while 77 years of age this year he's still going strong, currently working on The Ghost of Munich, a film about the meetings of Munich in 1938, where he works with playwright, former president and now screenwriter, Václav Havel.
Information got from
www.riff.is