Marketa’s digital facelift

July 2, 2011, 11:12 AM

Marketa Lazarová, dir. František Vláčil

The new trend of remastering notable works of world cinematography still relevant to today’s audiences because of their timeless appeal has finally reached the festival. At the festival´s initiative, the Prague UPP studio remastered the film considered by many film historians and critics to be the most important work of Czech cinematography – Marketa Lazarova. Frantisek Vlacil finished the film, inspired by Vladislav Vancura’s novel, in 1967.

“We have created an identical copy of what the authors created in the 1960s. We remove all imperfections from a film. We never change the original, we do not improve it,” said technical director of UPP Ivo Marak. UPP used three different copies of the film with over three quarters of a million of frames that had to be scanned into a computer and restored. Everything, including finding out whether imperfections were due to transcript or damage or whether they were caused by the technology used at the time, took the studio only six weeks. The most complicated shot needed five days of work, even though it only lasts five seconds.

“No one has ever attempted a remastering at this scale here. A couple of years ago we did not even have the technology to do it,” said Marak. Considering the cost of the project, he admits it is not realistic to remaster all classic films. “Take the Karlstejn castle, you can’t expect to ever recuperate the cost of its reconstruction either, but it is a matter of cultural maturity to do it. I believe people will see the remastering of the most important films in the same way.”

Read Jakub Andel’s story about the remastering of Marketa Lazarova in today’s Festival Daily.

Screening:

2. 7. 14:00 Grand hall (world premiere)

6. 7. 12:00 Čas

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