slovak classics
— text: Matúš Kvasnička — photo: archive of the SFI/Václav Polák,
42 — 43
archive of the SFI —
The Fates of Heroes Last August marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of director Martin Hollý. The Slovak Film Institute has released his film Night Riders (1981) on Blu-ray and DVD. Hollý began his career as a documentarist and considered making documentaries his biggest source of knowledge on filmmaking. His fiction debut The Crows Fly Over (1962) was released during the advent of the Czechoslovak New Wave. “In my films, be it in a more traditional or modern way, I wanted to tell the story of my times as a sort of chronicler. I have never been an auteur filmmaker. I would not even know how to make my own script into a film. It would bore me, and I would not be able to bring anything new to the process. I enjoy getting inspired by somebody else's ideas and then interpret them through my own lens,” he told Richard Blech in an interview from 1994, an excerpt of which you can find in the Night Riders booklet. A Film Appealing to the Audiences and a Thought-Provoking Piece of Art In their review of Night Riders, the Czech magazine Scéna noted that “this picture combines the strengths of a film appealing to broad audiences and a thought-provoking piece of art” and applauded the cooperation between
the Czech film studios at Barrandov and Slovak studios at Koliba which, “when supported by a mature choice of the subject matter, keeps delivering distinctive works.” This was Hollý's second such cooperation in a short period of time. The contemporary reviews with a more critical subtext were mostly motivated by the comparison of the film with Hollý's former project at Barrandov, a war film named Signum Laudis (1980), and its success. Night Riders was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Its story is set in the period shortly after World War I and the formation of Czechoslovakia. It takes place on the Slovak-Polish border where two men are pitted against each other by the times they live in. A border guard commander Edo Halva, portrayed by Radoslav Brzobohatý, is faced by a worthy adversary Marek Orban, the leader of horse smugglers played by Michal Dočolomanský. Orban does not break the law for his own personal gain but to help the poverty-stricken village and earn some money for a collective emigration in search of a better life in
