R.I.P. MILOS STEHLIK
Milos Stehlik at the 71st Cannes Film Festival via WBEZ.org
Independent and International film pioneer Milos Stehlik has died of cancer at 70. Stehlik was a member of the Telluride Film Festival's Board of Governors and was a recipient of the fest's Silver Medallion back in 1997.
Here's the program entry from the 24th Fest (1997) complete with essay by the late Roger Ebert:
Stehlik was instrumental in bringing films from the Czech New Wave to America.
Variety has a very nice recap of Stehlik's life, career and ties to Telluride linked here. Included in that story is the news that beginning with this year's fest, one of the 50 members of TFF's Student Symposium will named Milos Stehlik/Facets Scholar.
Additionally, from RogerEbert.com, this from Brian Tallerico.
Also from his hometown Chicago newspapers. Here are stories from The Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Tribune.
Also, I reached out to former Telluride Film Festival Co-Director Gary Meyer who was kind enough to share some thoughts about Stehlik:
“Film is the most important art and it has the power to change the universe.”—Milos Stehlik
First, Milos Stehlik was a friend. He was a passionate yet gentle lover of cinema with a smile that made you especially happy to see him and his equally passionate wife Elizabeth. He enjoyed discussing practically any aspect of the movies and was especially interested in giving a platform to underrepresented voices from all over the world, especially the Czech films of his home country.
Milos was one of the most important film people on the Chicago scene. Facets MultiMedia was long an adventurous exhibition space with innovative programming and strong educational outreach to youth with classes, a film summer camp and the annual children's film festival he started 36 years ago that has an international impact.
Early on Milos saw the opportunity to expand people's cinema awareness by starting a video rental and sales division so that patrons could go deeper into their movie exploration. The catalogs they issued were huge and became essential reference books much like the Audio and Films Inc. rental catalogs of the 1970s. Look at this reference page. They also released for home video and libraries many hard-to-find films. Keeping ahead of the curve Facets moved from VHS to DVD/BluRay as those changes happened and dove into streaming early on.
Milos knew how to find and develop talented people to carry out his vision and keep Facets an essential and relevant place for film lovers. He had the vision to make certain a succession plan was in place to so his legacy would carry forward.
He was a staple on Chicago public radio's WBEZ, wrote about movies and was a popular film presenter.
Milos was a longtime attendee at the Telluride Film Festival, contributing his knowledge and connections. He had been on the Board of Governors for many years and was most recently President (2016-2017).
TELLURIDE AND OSCAR PART FOUR: BEST ACTOR
Picking up where I left off last week, I'm continuing an eight part series of articles tracing the connection between films that have played Telluride's Film Fest and the eight "major" Oscar categories.
Last Thursday I looked at T-ride and the Best Actress nominees from the past 14 years. Today it's Best Actor. Here are the actors that played films at TFF since 2005 who were Oscar nominated as leads. Additionally, if that actor won it is indicated with ***.
2005: Joaquin Phoenix/Walk the Line, Heath Ledger/Brokeback Mountain, Philip Seymour Hoffman/Capote***
2006: Forest Whitaker/The Last King of Scotland***, Peter O'Toole/Venus
2007: Daniel Day Lewis/There Will Be Blood*** (I always count this and Benjamin Button even though we only saw a portion of each film in tributes to Daniel Day Lewis and David Fincher)
2008: Brad Pitt/The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2009: George Clooney/Up in the Air
2010: Colin Firth/The King's Speech***, Javier Bardem/Biutiful, James Franco/127 Hours
2011: Jean Dujardin/The Artist***, George Clooney/The Descendents
2012: No nominees
2013: Bruce Dern/Nebraska, Chiwetel Ejiofor/12 Years a Slave
2014: Michael Keaton/Birdman, Benedict Cumberbatch/The Imitation Game, Steve Carell/Foxcatcher
2015: Michael Fassbender/Steve Jobs
2016: Casey Affleck/Manchester by the Sea***, Ryan Gosling/La La Land
2017: Gary Oldman/Darkest Hour***
2018: No nominees
Notes: 22 nominees over the 14 years with seven wins. 2018 is the only year since 2005 that no TFF film had a Best Actor nominee.
Thursday we'll take a look at the History of Telluride and Best Supporting Actress.
JUDY TRAILER ARRIVES WITH A HINT OR TWO
As reported yesterday, the Judy Garland biopic starring Renee Zellweger landed a full length trailer yesterday. Here it is from YouTube:
Included in a couple of stories I've seen is speculation as to the possibility of fall fest screenings for the film. Andreas Wiseman writing for Deadline.com says, "We've heard that there's a good chance the the movie could debut at Telluride."
Meanwhile, other coverage of the trailer release is linked here from The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire and The Playlist.
Judy is scheduled for release on Sept. 27th.
More from MTFB on Thursday...
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