Published: April 26, 2016| 03:33 PM

The festival will commemorate the work of the controversial visionary and the very first independent American filmmaker through eight of his films, including the legendary Laura.

“He could be such a bully on the set and could destroy people, and then he would be a charming, witty companion at dinner who knew the best wines and caviar,” recalled actress Deborah Kerr of one of the most distinctive personalities of the overseas film industry, Otto Preminger (1905 – 1986). “Otto was a terrorist – he’s Arafat, a Nazi, Saddam Hussein – who never knew the difference between lying and not lying,” said author Leon Uris in exasperation over their problematic work together on the film adaptation of his best-selling novel Exodus, while Frank Sinatra, the star of The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), had nothing but words of admiration for Preminger (“Otto was so smart in every possible way”).

The native Austrian who set out across the Atlantic in 1935 broached a number of taboo themes, thereby significantly influencing the development of the American film industry. The first ever independent producer working with autonomy in the Hollywood system, Preminger emerged victorious from a variety of clashes with the censors, and with the gusto of the challenge-inclined he successfully fought against racial, sexual, and other prejudices. He offered powerful, career-launching roles to well-known actors such as Ben Gazzara and Kim Novak, and gave their much admired colleague William Holden a share in the profits as compensation for a salary cut – the first producer to do so. He brought Jean Seberg to the silver screen, and she went on to become the grand muse of the French Nouvelle Vague, as well as New York graphic designer Saul Bass, and by listing Dalton Trumbo’s real name in the credits he de facto rehabilitated the outstanding screenwriter, a victim of McCarthyism long forced to work under a pseudonym after headlining the Hollywood blacklist.

A director, producer, actor and screenwriter, Otto Preminger belonged to a group of European directors, who, in the 1920s headed overseas and in the following decades fundamentally influenced the character of local film production. By adapting the rules of various genres they created crucial works within an evolving industry. While centrepiece of the Karlovy Vary showcase will no doubt be the outstanding film noir Laura (1944), there is also the potential for an audience favourite in Preminger‘s successful adaptation of the theater play The Moon Is Blue (1953), with which he entered the history of film not only as one of the first “indie” directors and producers but also as an unflinching fighter against both hypocrisy and the system of censorship, whose antiquated rigidity he turned upon itself to promote his own “scandalous” work. Also on view in Karlovy Vary this year will be Preminger’s controversial study of drug addiction The Man with a Golden Arm (1955), his adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s bestseller Bonjour Tristesse (1958) starring Jean Seberg, the remarkable courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the epic Exodus (1960) and probably the most acclaimed political drama of the last century Advise & Consent (1962). The programme will close with the extremely informative documentary portrait Anatomy of a Filmmaker (1991), in which the audience is taken through the director’s career by his frequent collaborator, actor Burgess Meredith.