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13 projects in development and six works in progress to be presented at festival’s co-production market.

New films from the Czech Republic’s Beata Parkanová and Slovenian director Martin Turk are among the projects in development and works in progress being presented at the 24th edition of the East-West co-production market Connecting Cottbus (coco), which takes place from November 9-11 during Germany’s FilmFestival Cottbus.

Parkanová’s feature project Black Blood, produced by Ondrej Zach of Prague-based Ozet Film, sees her returning to Cottbus after presenting her previous feature The Word as a work in progress at last year’s Connecting Cottbus.

HBO Europe has appointed Herve Payan as its new chief exec. Payan will take over January 1 next year and will consolidate HBO Europe, HBO Nordic and HBO Netherlands under one umbrella. Line Mykland will serve as COO and executive vp, Nordic, with Ondrej Zach serving as COO and executive vp, Central Europe. Antony Root will continue to serve as executive vp, original programming and production at HBO Europe as the company continues to ramp up its original output. Payan…...

The Karlovy Vary grand jury (U.S. exhibitor Tim League; Angelina Nikonova, Russia; Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Iceland; Hangameh Panahi, France; Ondrej Zach, Czech Republic) has awarded Karlovy Vary’s $25,000 Grand Prix Crystal Globe to Massachusetts-based French director Diego Ongaro’s first feature, “Bob and the Trees.” Starring the real life Bob Tarasuk, a logger and farmer from Bridgeport, Connecticut, the film was developed out of a documentary short Ongaro made about Tarasuk in 2010. The vérite-style film world-premiered at Sundance. The Special Jury Prize of $15,000 went to the Austrian film “Those Who Fall Have Wings,” written and directed by Peter Brunner, who studied under Michael Haneke at the Filmacademy Vienna. This is his second feature. The best director award went to Kosovo’s Visar Morina for the film “Babai,” about a young boy forced to grow up fast when his father abandons him. Financed by Germany, Kosovo, Macedonia and...

Film director who suffered censorship in her native Czechoslovakia for her 'anti-communist' films

Vera Chytilová, who has died aged 85, was one of the brightest of the new wave of film directors who emerged in Czechoslovakia in the mid-60s. Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Jan Nemec, Jirí Menzel, Ján Kadár and Miloš Forman were all products of Famu, the national film school in Prague. After the Russian invasion in 1968 put an end to the Prague Spring, Passer, Kadár and Forman left for the Us, and Nemec went into exile in western Europe. Menzel, who remained, was restricted despite repudiating his "anti-communist" films in 1974. But Chytilová, whose Daisies (1966) was the most adventurous and anarchic film of the period, was silenced.

Born in Ostrava, now in the Czech Republic, Chytilová had a strict Catholic upbringing. "I left that basic, personified faith," she later said. "It seemed like a crutch to me. I realised it...