AWARDS AND TRIBUTES

MOFFOM is devoted to presenting the widest possible variety of international music-related films drawn from all genres and countries of origin. Each year, as part of the overall selection process, MOFFOM honors two outstanding filmmakers who have devoted a considerable part of their career to a focus on music-related themes with a special award for Lifetime Achievement within the field of music on film.

As a symbolic acknowledgement of their accomplishments, the honorees are presented with an elegant Bohemian crystal vase at the opening ceremony, courtesy of the local firm Artěl, which specializes in combining traditional standards of luxury glassware with modern ideals of utility.

MOFFOM also devotes special sections of the festival program each year to showing partial retrospectives in the form of tributes dedicated to specific filmmakers whose work has had extraordinary influence in the development of certain aspects of the music film.

2007 Lifetime Achievement Award - Hana Hegerová (CZ)

Hana Hegerová has been a crucial figure in Czech and European cultural life for decades. Best known as the leading Czechoslovak exponent of the last flowering of chanson and cabaret song in the 1960s, she has also had a lengthy association with the world of cinema both as a dramatic actress and a musical contributor. After her first film role in Jiří Krejčík’s “Frona” (1954), Hegerová went on to play in several feature films. She also contributed to the growth of Czech music film culture during the 1960s with notable appearances in Miloš Forman’s “Konkurs” (1963) and the famed Ján Roháč and Vladimír Svitáček musical “Kdyby tisíc klarinetů” (1964).

2007 Lifetime Achievement Award - Fred Frith (UK)

Well-known for his long and legendary career as a musician, composer and improviser, Fred Frith has also attained rare distinction in his work in the field of film. He was the subject of the acclaimed portrait film, “Step Across the Border” (1990), often regarded as one of the most important music documentaries in decades. Frith was also a key participant in its artfully achieved synthesis of music improvisation and film language. Since the success of the film, Frith has appeared in several other documentaries and has also pursued an unusually fruitful collaboration with documentary director Thomas Riedelsheimer.

2006 Lifetime Achievement Award - William Ferris (USA)

A widely recognized leader in the study of African-American music and folkways, Faulkner’s Mississippi, and race relations in the American South, William Ferris is a prolific writer, folklorist and documentary filmmaker. Ferris has conducted thousands of interviews with musicians over the course of a distinguished career spanning almost four decades, ranging from the famous (B.B. King and James “Son” Thomas) to the unrecognized (churchgoers, barbershop philosophers, penitentiary inmates and countless others).

2006 Lifetime Achievement Award - Ladislav Rychman (CZ)

As part of its continuing dedication to honoring the pioneers of Czech music cinema, MOFFOM presents a tribute to the forgotten master of the popular Czechoslovak musicals of the 1960s, Ladislav Rychman. Ladislav Rychman first entered the arena of the music film in the 1950s, directing several short documentaries on traditional Czech folk subjects, ranging from the iconoclastic bagpipe musician and scholar Josef Režný and authentic village Moravian string bands to the large organized dance ensembles of the era.

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award - Larry Weinstein (Canada)

Larry Weinstein is Canada's foremost director of documentaries on musical subjects, working around the world in cooperation with Toronto's Rhombus Media and in co-production with practically all major international broadcasters. His films on the lives of 20th Century composers (including Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Joaquin Rodrigo, Kurt Weill and Dmitri Shostakovich) have generated enormous interest, winning prizes and delighting audiences worldwide.

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Albert Maysles (USA)

Albert Maysles has been one of the leading figures in international cinema since the 1960s. Along with his brother David (1931-1987) he was a pioneer of "Direct Cinema" and a strictly realist approach to the documentary film based in the principles of non-intervention and a deeply felt humanism. Their early film portraits of the Beatles, Marlon Brando, and Truman Capote pointed the way towards the magnificent Salesman, hailed as one of the finest documentaries ever made on the American way of life and chosen by the Library of Congress as one of the Top 25 American films.

2004 Lifetime Achievement Award Ron Mann (Canada)

Ron Mann is an award-winning filmmaker and counterculture stalwart, who has been documenting and dissecting alternative culture for almost thirty years. His documentaries often focus on the role of dissent and outsiders within the broad panorama of popular culture. Among his best-known films are "Grass" (about the history of marijuana use in North America) and "Comic Book Confidential" (a social history of the world of comic books), both of which received the Genie Award for Best Documentary from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

2004 Lifetime Achievement Award Allan Miller (USA)

Allan Miller is one of the most highly esteemed documentary filmmakers specializing in the field of classical music. He was instrumental in the production of two Academy Award-winning films: as the artistic advisor for "From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China" in 1979, and as the producer of "Bolero" in 1973. His film "Small Wonders," about a divorced mother who developed violin programs in three East Harlem schools, was also nominated for an Academy Award.

2006 Tribute to Simon Broughton (UK)

Simon Broughton is a leading independent television director based in London. He worked for many years at the BBC, first in radio and then later in television, shooting adventurous and provocative music films in locales ranging from Transylvania to Afghanistan. His work includes several documentaries for the series Rhythms of the World, an award-winning documentary about the composers in the Jewish ghetto of Terezín and the recent “Sufi Soul: the Mystic Music of Islam” for Channel 4.

2006 Tribute to Julian Temple (UK)

Julien Temple was first drawn to the film medium through an early fascination with the British pop music films of the 1960s. He became fascinated with the visual style of the emerging punk culture while a film student in London, and made a sensational directorial debut with “The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle“ (1979), a sprawling, anarchic and legendary account of the meteoric rise and disintegration of the Sex Pistols, dubbed the “Citizen Kane of rock movies” and “the most imaginative use of a rock group since The Beatles debuted in A Hard Day‘s Night.

2005 Tribute to Henry Hills (USA)

Henry Hills began making experimental films in 1975 while a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Almost immediately, he was drawn to the intensely rhythmic possibilities offered by film editing. After moving to New York in 1978, Hills became a close associate of the Language Poets and the Downtown improvised music scene, resulting in the experimental classic Money (1985).

2005 Tribute to Ján Roháč (Czechoslovakia)

Ján Roháč (1932-1980) was a notable product of the remarkable cultural synthesis that took place in Prague during the relative openness of the 1960s. First active as a theatre director, Roháč was drawn to the possibilities of combining various media, experimenting with lighting effects and film and photo projections for the stage before finding a unique niche as a close collaborator of the Semafor Theatre. During its peak period under the dynamic leadership of Jiří ©litr and Jiří Suchý, Roháč successfully combined his own visual playfulness and the zany antics of the Semafor actors with film language in a series of television shorts that today can be seen as a clear precursor of the music video format.

2005 Tribute to Don Letts (UK)

Don Letts was a central figure in the punk movement of the mid-1970s. The first resident DJ at the Roxy in London, he became close friends with members of the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Eventually, he began to document the atmosphere and scene around him on 8mm film, leading to what became "Punk Rock Movie", which attracted the attention of Martin Scorcese, who requested a private screening, and Federico Fellini, who described Letts as having the "sensibility of a terrorist".