The best profession in the world is film, says Jan Bílek, this year he will enter the Producers' Hall of Fame at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

His credits include the series Maigret, Agnieszka Holland's Burning Bush and Ivan Zachariáš's Wasteland

Producer Jan Bílek

The beloved Maigret with Bruno Cremer, The Dreyfus Affair, as well as Kachyňa's Prima sezóna, Agnieszka Holland's Burning Bush and Ivan Zachariáš's Wasteland – these are all series and films that bear the name of internationally recognised Czech producer Jan Bílek. This year, he will be inducted into the Producers' Hall of Fame at the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Following Jiří Ježek, Jaromír Kallista and Jarmila Poláková, he is the fourth representative of the film production profession to receive this prestigious award, which is presented annually by the Audiovisual Producers Association (APA) at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Jan Bílek will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, 6th July at a ceremonial presentation at Karlovy Vary's Poštovní Dvůr. The evening will be hosted by Jan Cina, who appeared in the series Wasteland. Jan Bílek will receive the award from the actress Táňa Pauhofová and the producer Tereza Polachová.

Profile: https://youtu.be/OU8DjlDkIg4

"I think we must not forget, and everyone must always know, that the best job in the world is film – there is nothing better," says the sixty-eight-year-old producer Jan Bílek, who has dedicated his entire life to film. As a young man, he started in a production role at Czechoslovak State Film. Already in the 1980s, thanks to his language abilities, he specialised in co-productions with German and French film companies, later graduating from FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). In 1991, he founded the independent production company ETAMP with French partners. As one of the first companies established after November 1989, it focused on international contracts, specifically on providing comprehensive services for foreign film productions. He thus became a pioneer in this area of film production.

Jan Bílek was involved in the founding of APA and also in the revival of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. To date, he has more than one hundred film and advertising projects to his credit, along with collaborations with renowned international creators and actors. Projects he worked on have won numerous prestigious awards. As a producer, he also collaborated on the films Too Loud a Solitude with Philippe Noiret in the lead role, The Bed by Oscar Reif or Passage by Juraj Herz and many series projects. He had a knack for selecting talent – he made films with cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, whom he compares to Woody Allen's favourite cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. He introduced one of the most influential Czech cinematographers, the late Vladimír Smutný, to the French market, whom he considered a genius in his field, and who then, thanks to Bílek, became one of the cinematographers of the famous co-production series Maigret. It was precisely thanks to this engagement that Jan Bílek personally knew one of the sons of the author of Maigret's literary source, Georges Simenon. Not only because of his collaboration on the miniseries Burning Bush, he also has a friendly relationship with director Agnieszka Holland. "Agnieszka Holland and I are very fond of each other and we had a motto together: Let's shoot digitally, let's use all the possibilities that exist, but when we talk about film, let's talk analogously," says producer Jan Bílek.

The day after entering the Producers' Hall of Fame, on Monday, 7th July from 12:00, the public will have the opportunity to see Jan Bílek in KVIFF.TV Park. In an interview, he will speak about his long-standing experience as a producer and aspects of this fascinating film profession in changing times. This will be preceded by a screening of a longer twenty-minute version of a profile about him. Independent producers who significantly contributed to the formation of this profession in the Czech audiovisual environment after 1989 have been inducted into the APA Producers' Hall of Fame since 2022. The author of the award in the form of a statuette shaped like a brass exclamation mark cast in glass is Jakub Berdych Karpelis from Qubus studio.

APA is again this year a partner of the Czech Film Industry Forum programme, which will take place on Sunday, 6th July from 15:30 to 19:00, and International Industry Insights on Monday, 7th July from 10:30 to 13:30 at the Film Industry Main Stage at the Imperial Spa. These are conference segments of short presentations, within which leading Czech film associations, state institutions and key industry players will appear. APA will present a balance of the Czech audiovisual industry for 2024, research on viewing habits, a study of possibilities and barriers to cross-border distribution of Czech feature audiovisual works, and a European study on intellectual property (IP) strategies for independent producers.

APA – Audiovisual Producers Association

Martina Reková, martina.rekova@4press.cz, +420 731 573 993

Klára Bobková, klara.bobkova@4press.cz, +420 731 514 462

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www.asociaceproducentu.cz