Erich von Däniken Visits Czech Republic
Erich von Däniken will visit the 36th International Film Festival TOURFILM in Karlovy Vary.
In September 23-25, 2003, the most popular Czech spa town and the town of film festivals – Karlovy Vary- will receive guests of the 36th annual festival TOURFILM, organized by the Czech Tourist Authority, the Karlovy Vary Region and the Town of Karlovy Vary in collaboration with the agency Avant Promotion and the Karlovy Vary agency Premium Production.
TOURFILM, which is the oldest festival of tourist films in the world, is rich in news this year. For the first time the 36th year of TOURFILM is connected with the 10th year of TOUR REGION FILM in Karlovy Vary. The corporate background will show the confrontation of Czech as well as foreign production and the presentation of the web sites and CD-ROMs.
The aim of the festivals is to acquaint the widest plenum of producers with the latest trends in the foreign production. It all should raise the level of our production mainly in the presentation of the Czech Republic, regions and towns in foreign televisions.
The participation will take place in three thematic categories: video records presenting national tourist authorities, regions and towns (maximum 30 minutes), video records specialized in commercial tourism (also maximum 30 minutes) and documentary and publicist programmes produced for TV broadcasting (maximum 60 minutes).
The multimedia category is separate; it includes web sites and CD ROMs.
The interest to participate in the festival breaks records this year, because in all the categories (tourist films, TV programmes and the competition of internet web sites and CD ROMs) there will participate 131 countries with 712 titles. 78 films and 72 multimedia of regions and towns will participate in the national competition TOUR REGION FILM this year.
TOURFORUM for experts copies the new content of TOURFILM. It is fully orientated towards annotated practical trailers with comparison of domestic and foreign video production and web sites with the themes of regions and towns. The Czech Tourist Authority will introduce its plans for promotion of the Czech Republic abroad for the year 2004.
The participation of Erich von Däniken, famous writer and mystery-expert, is top event on this year’s TOURFILM. Readers all over the world read his books, which reached multimillion editions. Erich von Däniken will visit Karlovy Vary in order to introduce his latest project – the tourist attraction MYSTERY PARK in INTERLAKEN.
In the Grandhotel PUPP there will also be interesting exhibitions of photographs “Czech traces at the Amazon springs” and “Czech Switzerland the way you do not know”. Meetings with the authors and travellers will enrich both the exhibitions. David Vávra and Radovan Lipus will come to introduce their new documentary series about Czech towns called “_umná m_sta” (Murmuring towns).
This year’s TOURFILM will have a rich accompanying program not only for the participants in the festival, but also for public, which will mostly have free admission. Film projections for schools will take place in the Great Hall of the spa hotel Thermal; on V_ídelní kolonáda (Spring Colonnade) and in the club Rotes Berlin there will be free projections on screens. Two projections of Cinematograph of the _adík brothers on the area in front of the Thermal hotel and near the V_ídelní kolonáda will complete the festival atmosphere, together with world music – music of various nations on the stage in front of the Thermal hotel and concerts for the young in the club Rotes Berlin.
Meetings of Czech and foreign artists under the name Artkontakt will enrich this year’s TOURFILM. Besides exhibiting their works, the artists will attempt to reach a record in the length of a painting. A few hundred meters long painting under the name “Wandering through the landscape of the world” should appear on the footpath between the Grandhotel PUPP and the summer cinema.
Great interest, especially of children, is expected on the exhibition called TAU TAO – the exposition of shooting films and serials by director Jind_ich Polák, mainly the serial Pan Tau (Mr.Tau) and The Visitors. The exposition of costumes, requisites, photographic documentation and posters of these “travellers” will take place till mid-October. During TOURFILM the exposition will be accompanied by projection of films.
The secretariat of the festival:
AVANT Promotion PREMIUM PRODUCTION
Americká 42 Moravská 40
120 00 Praha 2 360 01 Karlovy Vary
tel./fax: +420 224 250 334, 222 511 813 tel./fax +420 353 239 073
e-mail: info@tourfilm.cz e-mail: info@premium-production.cz
www.tourfilm.cz www. premium-production.cz
Erich von Däniken
Erich Anton Paul von Däniken was born on 14 April 1935 in Zofingen in Switzerland as the son of a clothes factory owner.
As early as in the course of his secondary school studies, Däniken was interested in archaeology and futurology, space travels and philosophy, especially the philosophy of religion. He went in for electronics, molecular biology and mutations of mankind. In 1968, he published his first book “Memories of the future” (filmed in 1969), which caused, as written by New York Times, worldwide “dänikeniade”. By numerous literary evidences and archaeological finds Däniken attempted to document his hypotheses about visits of astronauts from other planets on the Earth in primeval ages. Shortly after, the second Däniken´s book “Back to stars”(1969) appeared on the list of bestsellers and in 1972 the book “Seed from the Universe” with the sub-title ”Traces and plans of extraterrestrial intelligence”. In 1973 Däniken introduced visible objects of his theory in his book “My world in pictures – picture evidence for theses, speculations and research”. In the following year he criticized Christianity and the Catholic Church, legends about the saints and Little Jesus as well as miraculous tales from Lourdes in his book “Epiphany”
His book “The proofs of five continents” from 1977 became another bestseller. In 1979 Däniken published “The lexicon of ancient astronautics” by Ulrich Dopatka, which became standard documentation of Däniken´s evidence (in 1993 republished under the name “Lexicon of extraterrestrial phenomena” and in 1997 updated as “The Grand Encyclopaedia of Erich von Däniken”)
In the 80-ies in several books Däniken analysed previous presence of gods, dealt with the pre-history of megalithic parks and also with the empire on the Nile River (“The eyes of sphinx”). In 1991 he introduced his first book for the young called “The mysteries of ancient Europe” and in 1992 he presents the documentation of the phenomenon of worshiping gods from the ancient times to recent cargo-cults in his book “The shock by the Gods”. In 1993 there followed 25-volume TV serial on the station Sat1, called “Following the traces of the omnipotent”.
On 29 September 1996, the TV station RTL transmitted the Däniken´s film “The Extra-Terrestrials – are they coming back?” with the author himself, which was extremely successful (4,9 million viewers). In 1997 together with RTL, Däniken prepared two more series. The American station ABC was their co-producer. At present a new TV series under the name “Chariots of the Gods” has been prepared. It will have been broadcasted worldwide since 2003 in the form of science fiction, following the famous “Acta-X”. Another news is “The world of mysteries”, the film for the IMAX.
The total edition of Däniken´s books is about 60 million exemplars. They were translated to 32 languages. You can find the list of all his publications as well as the contact to the Swiss Provincial Library, which collects all the translations, on the web site:
August 26, 2003
Posted in: Czech Republic