LFF Preview: Day 1 - Citizen Havel

As I mentioned previously I’m doing a pile of micro-reviews over on 12 Seconds (which they kindly mentioned on their blog - thanks guys!) while I’m at the London Film Festival press screenings. The plan didn’t quite go according to plan as the wi-fi at the National Film Theatre turns out to be too weak for video. Not a big deal as I can simply post the vids in the evening as I did tonight, but it means I can’t do the more fly on the wall stuff I was planning.

What I have learned already is that this is a tough assignment. Fun, but a little more taxing than I’d considered. While I think I’m doing OK and will hopefully get better I’m not really doing justice to some incredible films. So seeing as I had three very good pieces of cinema to watch today it only seems fair for me to embed the tiny reviews here and then expand on them a little.

First up was Paul Koutecky and Miroslav Janek’s CITIZEN HAVEL:

LFF: Citizen Havel on 12seconds.tv

Knowing a little about the Velvet Revolution, but hardly anything about what followed in the Czech Republic this documentary was a real eye opener. I admit to dragging my heels a little towards the South Bank this morning. The sun was out and it seemed crazy to spend two hours in a dark room with revolutionary types. Thankfully from the very outset Citizen Havel is so warm an illustration of one man that you are immediately drawn into the heady days of 1992 and follow very closely this former political dissident as he becomes the first president of a very new country. As political documentaries go I’ve never seen anything quite like this film as the people behind the camera are given unprecedented access to a series of unprecedented events.

Other key figures of the period pass through (Blair, Bush and even a saxophone tooting Clinton), but Vaclav Havel remains front and centre and always an intellectual first, a state leader second. It’s an often hilarious look at a normal man standing up for what he believes in suddenly thrust into an international spotlight, holding the country together as others try and bring him down.

A treat of a movie and highly recommended, it plays on the 22nd and 26th of October. Full details here.