Film.sk – Slovak Film of the Century
— photo: archive of the SFI/Margita Polónyová —
The winner of the Film.sk’s survey – Slovak Film of the Century – is the feature fiction debut of director Dušan Hanák. 322 was made in 1969 and won Grand Prize at Mannheim-Heidelberg International Filmfestival.
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film.sk - slovak film of the century
— text: Matúš Kvasnička
Aside from the classics of the 1960s, many of which also ended up locked in a vault during communism, some newer more recent motion pictures were also successful in the survey. Many films are missing in it – they are not filmed well, not original enough, boring, outdated, compliant to the era they were made in... Others that were produced not long ago, or older ones that still remain vigorous, are authentic and can spark interest even upon second or further viewing, pose questions and often do not provide the answers, are also missing from it. The reason for it is apparent; they simply could not squeeze in and the respondents preferred other films. That is how surveys like this one work. Not every respondent was thrilled by the idea. How do we choose ten films among the hundreds? They were all given a list of fiction, documentary, and animation feature films made in Slovakia, or in Slovak co-production from 1921 to 2020. When we were outlining the survey created on the occasion of the centenary of the first Slovak feature film Jánošík (1921), we decided to leave out short films and narrow it down to feature films, without further division into fiction, documentaries, and animation. Another issue was choosing how many people to ask and how to select them. The respondents are film experts and critics who regularly evaluate the local film production of previous years on the pages of Film.sk. Martin Ciel, Jana Dudková, Eva Filová, Martin Kaňuch, Katarína Mišíková, and Jelena Paštéková were joined by our colleagues from the Slovak Film Institute, Petra Hanáková and Mária Ferenčuhová. Since the survey’s title is Film.sk – Slovak Film of the Century, editors-in-chief of previous
editions of Film.sk Simona Nôtová and Daniel Bernát, as well as the current editor-in-chief Matúš Kvasnička participated in it too. We let the respondents decide on their own criteria and logic behind the selection. It is simply impossible to declare that 322 is “two ranks better” than Pictures of the Old World or that The Boxer and Death “ranks a few places higher” than Before Tonight Is Over. Moreover, the list features very diverse films. In his text about film acting in the 1960s, the dramaturge and playwright Martin Porubjak was searching for a common denominator of many of the featured titles. He found it in the high degree of authenticity and the effort to discover the truth about oneself through art. The same can be said about the films appearing in the survey. Each respondent first selected ten films they considered to be either the best or interesting enough to deserve a mention, and put these ten titles in order, starting from what they considered best. The films were then scored and a collection of twenty films was rounded up. The respondents received this list, in alphabetical order, and again had to rank the items according to their own preferences, starting with their best. The sum of these points determined the final results. Please, do not perceive the survey Film.sk – Slovak Film of the Century as a dogma dismissing all the other options, and do not pay too much attention to the order of the list. Take it as a collection of exceptional film artworks that are worth watching. Nor as an attempt to call attention to the fact that one or two hands are not enough to count all the excellent Slovak films. There are many more! ◀
