13th Festival 1966

Festival Director Ian Klava, who had resigned at the end of 1965 after running the festival for four years, was replaced by David Stratton.

Censorship, which had been getting steadily more severe during the 1960s, began to affect the festival. Not only had two films offered to the festival by their local distributors been banned outright (Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana and Jean-Luc Godard’s Une femme mariée), but one or two festival importations had been cut by the censor, most seriously Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes. The festival decided to protest publicly against this treatment of its films, commenced a campaign for the introduction of a restricted, or R, certificate, and announced it would release details to the public of any cuts ordered by the censors, something no importer had done in the past. The result was an even more savage attack on festival films, with Miloš Forman’s charming A Blonde in Love being particularly affected.

Also cut this year were Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Joachim Kunert’s The Adventures of Werner Holt (East Germany) and Shin Sangokk’s Sam-yong (South Korea).

The festival opened with Rene Allie’s The Undignified Old Lady (France), and showed a total of 30 features: Georges Franju’s Thomas the Imposter, Luchino Visconti’s Sandra, Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, Kon Ichikawa’s My Enemy the Sea, Jerzy Skolimowski’s second film Walkover, Manuel Summers’ A Girl in Mourning (Spain), Zbynek Brynychis The Fifth Rider Is Fear (Czechoslovakia), Ion Popescu Gopo’s The White Moor (Romania). Alexander Zguridi’s Enchanted Islands (USSR), Michel Brault’s Moontrap (Canada), Alexander Seiler’s The Italians (Switzerland), Philippe Arthuys’ The Glass Cage (Israel), Kangychyun Lee’s The Dead and the Alive (South Korea), Luis Alcoriza’s Always Farther Away (Mexico) and Nico Papatakis’ Les abysses (France). There were also several important first features from new directors: Dusan Makavejev’s Man Is not a Bird (Yugoslavia), Istvan Szabo’s The Age of Daydreaming (Hungary), Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket (Italy), Larissa Shepitko’s Heat (USSR), Tomas G Alea’s Cumbite (Cuba) and Gilles Carle’s The Merry World of Leopold Z (Canada).

Retrospective screenings of Carl Dreyer’s Ordet and David Bradley’s Julius Caesar were also held.

Shorts included: Walerian Borowczyk’s Les jeux des anges and Grandmother’s Encyclopedia, Yoji Kuri’s Aos and The Man Next Door, Jiri Trnka’s The Hand, Santiago Alvarez’ Now, Tim Burstall’s Painting People, John Halas’ The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra, Chris Marker’s The Koumiko Mystery, Norman Mclaren’s Mosaic, Richard Williams’ The Dermis Probe, Jack Gold’s The Visit, Ryan Larkin’s Syrinx, Paul Verhoeven’s Let’s Have a Party, Alan Schneider’s Film (written by Samuel Beckett and starring Buster Keaton), Marks’ and Jutrisa’s Metamorphosis and John Hubley’s The Hat.