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Veteran film producer Evzen Kolar, whose credits include the 1997 Harvey Keitel drama “City of Industry,” has died in Los Angeles at age 67, his family announced Monday. The Czech-born filmmaker also produced the 1993 Leslie Nielsen-Rob Schneider comedy “Surf Ninjas” through his Kpi Entertainment production company and director Zalman King’s “Delta of Venus.” In addition, he produced John Avildsen’s 1999 Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie “Inferno” (a.k.a. “Desert Heat”), Bruce Beresford’s 2001 period drama “Bride of the Wind,” and John Irvin’s 2003 comedy “The Boys and Girls from County Clare” starring Colm Meaney, Bernard Hill and Andrea Corr.

Evzen Kolar, a veteran film executive who also produced such movies as Surf Ninjas and City of Industry, has died. He was 67.

Kolar died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, publicist Jan Kean announced.

In 1993, Kolar launched the production company Kpi Entertainment, where he produced Surf Ninjas (1993), starring Rob Schneider; the Zalman King erotic drama Delta of Venus (1995); City of Industry (1997), starring Harvey Keitel and Stephen Dorff; John Avildsen's Inferno (1999), with Jean-Claude Van Damme; and the Bruce Beresford period costume drama Bride of the Wind (2001).

Kolar also produced the Samuel Goldwyn...

Larger-than-life polyglot worked with Morgan Freeman, Sean Connery, Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Evzen Kolar, the Czech-born producer of The Boys & Girl From County Clare and City Of Industry, has died in California after a brief illness. He was 67.

Kolar was born in Moravia in the Czech Republic to a diplomat and got his first taste of entertainment as a child actor, before becoming an assistant director in Europe on commercials, television projects and features.

He lived in London in the late 1970s and produced fringe theatre before moving to the Us in 1979 where he built a name for himself as a production executive, notching up numerous line producer and producer credits.

After stints as vice-president of production at Fireline Productions, a subsidiary of the Armand Hammer Company, and CEO at Crossover Films Ent, Kolar worked as a line producer. His credits included Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery, Street Smart starring Morgan Freeman, Master Of The Universe with Dolph Lundgren...

This article was originally published in If Magazine #132 (June 2010).

Bruce Beresford When I was going to do Driving Miss Daisy, I offered it to Don McAlpine, but he turned it down. And then I offered it to Russell Boyd but he was doing something else. And then I remembered Peter and I thought .Hang on, I like that bloke Peter James. and said .Do you want to come over here and shoot this low-budget film?. And he did. That was the first.

I did enjoy working with him but we never thought it was anything special. In fact, when we finished the film they were planning not to release it.

We had very similar ideas on lighting and he had tremendously good taste . his lighting was always exqusite. Also, the thing I liked about him (and for that matter Don McAlpine) was that he would vary his style to suit the subject matter,...

Bruce Beresford has inked a deal to direct Rhapsody, a biopic of Russian classical composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. The film will be produced by Prelude Features' Frederick Muller in association with executive producers Edward R. Pressman, Floyd Bradley of Prelude Features and Timothy Prager, who also wrote the script. "Bruce is a real classical music aficionado, and he's done a film in this area before," said Pressman, citing the 2001 drama Bride of the Wind, which featured Gustav Mahler as a main character. "But it's a love story first and foremost, with political upheaval and a large canvas in the spirit of 'Doctor Zhivago.' "...