Don Letts (pictured above) needs no introduction to MOFFOM audiences. A guest and recipient of a special tribute at MOFFOM 2005, this year the Don returns with his new BBC-produced documentary on the life and times of the funk godfather, “George Clinton: Tales of Dr. Funkenstein” and a rare festival screening of the previously lost classic short “Clash on Broadway” documenting the band’s oft-mythologized visit to New York in 1981. Since he was last in Prague, he has also authored a fascinating book of memoirs, “Culture Clash” and MOFFOM is proud to present a book signing and discussion with the Don in association with Anagram Bookshop (in Ungelt) on Saturday, 20 October at 1:30 p.m.

 

Ben Barenholtz is a true legend in the world of independent filmmaking. After founding the Elgin Cinema, the world's leading art house cinema in its era, he originated the "Midnight Movie" concept and played a key role in the careers of emerging talents John Sayles, David Lynch and George Romero as a ground-breaking distributor. He later enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with the Coen Brothers as producer and executive producer, including "Barton Fink" the only film to have won all three main prizes at Cannes film festival. He also served as co-executive producer on Darren Aronofsky's Academy Award-winning "Requiem for a Dream" and recently released the engaging jazz documentary "Music Inn" - his first film as a director and a Czech premiere at MOFFOM 2007.

 

Lucia Palacio and Dieter Post from Play Loud! Productions will arrive in Prague with their film portrait of the pioneering Sixties avant-garde group The Monks, “Monks: the Transatlantic Feedback” having recently won the Prize for Best Editing at the Milano Doc Festival (www.milanodocfestival.it). The Monks themselves, whose recent reunion after forty years is captured in the film, are also back in the picture (and back to the scene of their artistic crimes) with upcoming gigs next week in Krems and Frankfurt.

   

Sam Dunn and Scot Mc Fayden are the directors and producers of a pair of Canadian “metal anthropology” films studying the behavior and musical devotion of the worldwide tribe of heavy metal enthusiasts. This year, MOFFOM will present the local premiere of the second installment, “Global Metal” in the main competition and also a special screening of the duo’s highly regarded 2005 debut documentary “Metal: a Headbanger’s Journey” – both guaranteed to result in provocative (and rocking) discussions with the gentlemen who just may be the world’s definitive metal filmmakers. 

 

Pavla Fleischer is a Prague-born and UK-based director whose new film “The Pied Piper of Hutzovina” has already attracted a great deal of attention abroad but will have its local homecoming at MOFFOM. The film had its genesis when Pavla met her subject, Eugene Hutz of cult band Gogol Bordello, while both were in Prague working on a film production. This chance meeting resulted in an epic road movie tracing Hutz and his Roma roots through Ukraine and Russia, and some outstanding music along the way.