Ekofilm 97

Abstract

IT WAS NO COINCIDENCE that the fairy-tale Southern Bohemian town of Český Krumlov became the site of the 23rd Festival of Film and Video programmes on Environment (EKOFILM 97). Cesky Krumlov, which is on the UNESCO's world cultural and natural heritage list, taking over the EKOFILM from the North Moravian Ostrava which hosted the festival since its inception during the communist rule in the mid-1970s. In those difficult days this festival was, as its present director Dr. Bedřich Moldán says, one of the "rare islands of renewed and fresh normality within an abnormal world." Some people see a deeper symbolism behind EKOFILM's new home: the steel-city Ostrava (a kind of Czech Detroit), was an example of environmental devastation while Český Krumlov, a few years ago still a neglected, dilapidating town, has been undergoing a careful restoration, revealing the Sleeping-Beauty charms of its medieval architecture....