Film.sk (Special English Edition 2019)

special edition of the monthly magazine on slovak cinema www.filmsk.sk

The Last Self-Portrait — Mimi & Lisa – Christmas Lights Mystery — Occupation 1968 review:

interview:

Martin Smatana — Rastislav Steranka

— Marián Hausner — Jonathan Owen 2018 IN SLOVAK F ILM

SLOVAK FILM INSTITUTE AND SLOVAK FILM COMMISSION JOIN FORCES TO PROMOTE SLOVAKIA AT INTERNATIONAL FILM MARKETS.

EUROPEAN FILM MARKET, BERLINALE 2019 [ 7 — 15 FEBRUARY 2019 ] MARCHÉ DU FILM, FESTIVAL DE CANNES 2019 [ 14 — 23 MAY 2019 ]

editorial

THE HISTORY AND PRESENT OF FILM.SK

Last year, we reviewed three Slovak films in the English-language issue of this magazine, and we are doing the same this year also. However, last year it was three feature films whilst this time round it is two documentaries and one animated project that we are reviewing. That says something about last year’s situation for Slovak production in cinemas – as far as feature films were concerned, most of them were minority co-productions, while the opposite held true for documentaries and they were somewhat more challenging.

In the Slovak issues of Film.sk, each year eight film critics and scientists review the domestic titles from the current year’s cinema distribution. Last year, the documentary The Last Self-Portrait (Posledný autoportrét, dir. Marek Kuboš) received the highest evaluation, and second was another documentary Occupation 1968 (Okupácia 1968, dir. Evdokia Moskvina, Linda Dombrovszky, Maria Elisa Scheidt, Magda Szymkow, Stephan Komandarev). We have chosen the reviews of both films for this issue of the magazine.

We bring you an overview of last year’s Slovak feature, documentary and animated production in three articles and we also add information on the distribution life of Slovak films.

Last year, no attendance records were broken for these films, but a record number of domestic full-length titles were made.

The Kite (Šarkan) is a short, animated film and it is in the Generation Kplus section at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was made by Martin Smatana and you can find an interview with him in this issue. At first glance, The Kite is a simple film, but it is better characterised by such attributes as pure, emotional, sincere, slightly nostalgic. Child audiences (but not only them) are readily captivated by its visual aspects.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t just make cheap grimaces at children, it is trying to say something serious, something about the fact that there are things in life that can hurt, albeit the film does not do so in a harsh or complex manner. Smatana’s The Kite is proof that one should not underestimate short films, minimise their significance, their creative demands on their audience, their artistic value and informative potential. The Director of the Slovak Film Institute’s National Cinematographic Centre (NCC), Rastislav Steranka, certainly thinks so. He regards work with short films as one of the priorities of the NCC, as he states in the interview on pages 34 – 36. ◀ — Daniel Bernát / Editor-in-chief —

Film.sk is a monthly about fi lm events in Slovakia published by the Slovak Film Institute.

It has been published since January 2000 and it is the only fi lm periodical in print in Slovakia.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief Simona Nôtová was present at its birth and she managed it until September 2012. Naturally, the monthly has undergone conceptual changes over the course of its existence but it was always based on the principle of the provision of a broad range of information on the events in the local fi lm and audiovisual milieu.

Film.sk is comprised of permanent sections: the Interview, Topic and Review which are complemented by further regular and irregular sections. These include current fi lm events, reports on fi lm festivals and fi lm presentations in Slovakia and abroad, evaluating reflections on important events, the glosses or comments of experienced fi lm journalists, contributions by fi lmmakers who respond to questions about the projects they are currently working on, profi les of personalities of Slovak cinema, separate texts about new Slovak fi lms based on the accounts of directors and producers, presentations of inspirational new books from the area of fi lm literature and several other sections. Film.sk also contains att achments which chart the annual results in one of the areas of Slovak cinema and provide valuable statistical data.

One of the regular att achments brings a report summarising Slovak cinematography for the previous year, divided into a number of chapters: Legislation, Financial Support, Film Education, Film Production, Film Distribution, Cinemas, Multiplexes and Film Clubs, Film Festivals and Film Screenings. The study of Czech cinematography, which is also published as an att achment to the monthly magazine, takes on a similar structure.

From January 2018, the monthly Film.sk is published in a larger format, in full colour, with a modern layout and with some new sections. Its role continues to be to provide information about fi lm and fi lm events in Slovakia, but it also reflects the conjunction of the Slovak and foreign audiovisual environments to a greater extent.

Contemporarily, Film.sk is a well-established fi lm magazine capable of appealing to fi lm experts, fi lmmakers, students and the wider public alike.

The website www.fi lmsk.sk has supported its printed version since 2001. ◀

content Publisher: Slovak Film Institute Address: film.sk / Slovak Film Institute Grösslingová 32 / 811 09 Bratislava Slovak Republic tel.: +421 2 57 10 15 25 e-mail: filmsk@sfu.sk Editor-in-chief: Daniel Bernát Editing: Jaroslava Jelchová Editorial board: Peter Dubecký Rastislav Steranka Marián Brázda Miroslav Ulman Simona Nôtová-Tušerová Andrea Biskupičová English translation: Ivana Musilová Design & Graphic design: p & j Printing: Dolis, s. r. o.

Cover photo: The Kite (Šarkan) – BFILM Film.sk is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic.

The opinions of the editioral stuff do not necessarily comply with the opinions expressed by the contributors.

23

film.sk

3 4—5 6 — 10

distribution of slovak fi lms in 2018 2018 in feature fi lm

11 — 13

2018 in documentary fi lm

14 — 16

2018 in animated fi lm

17

review: Mimi & Lisa – Christmas Lights Mystery

18 — 19

review: Occupation 1968

20 — 22

review: The Last Self-Portrait

23

berlinale 2019: Slovak Films at the Festival

24 — 27

interview: Martin Smatana

28 — 29

new fi lms in 2019

30

topic: Slovak Film Commission

31

topic: Presentation of Slovak Films Abroad

32 — 34

interview: Rastislav Steranka

35 — 37

interview: Marián Hausner

38

publication activities of the SFI

39

profi le: Peter Solan

40 — 41 42

Film.sk is supported by

from the history of the slovak fi lm institute

interview: Jonathan Owen reactions: The Miraculous Virgin on DVD/Blu-ray

from the history of the SFI

The Slovak Film Institute (SFI) is the sole state-funded memory and archive institution operating in the area of audiovision in Slovakia. The National Film Archive and the National Cinematographic Centre are the SFI’s basic organisational units. The SFI is a member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), European Film Promotion (since 2006); it functions as a service workplace for the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) and the Council of Europe cinema support fund – Eurimages. Creative Europe Desk Slovensko is also part of the Slovak Film Institute.

The Film Institute in Bratislava was established on 1st April 1963 and it was placed under the directorate of Film Production and Distribution (Filmová tvorba a distribúcia) in Bratislava. The fi lm archive also became part of the Institute; it was established in 1958 by the fi lm historian Ivan Rumanovský at the Slovak Film Distribution Company (Slovenská požičovňa fi lmov).

In 1970, the SFI was presented with a copy of the fi rst Slovak full-length feature fi lm Jánošík (dir. Jaroslav Siakeľ, 1921) which was later restored, provided with a soundtrack and in 1995 UNESCO placed it among the world cultural heritage.

In 1972, the Film Institute came under the Central Office of Slovak Film (Ústredie slovenského fi lmu).

By the end of 1976 the Film Club of the Central Office of Slovak Film was opened in Bratislava; at the present day, Cinema Lumière, belonging to the Slovak Film Institute, is located on its premises.

In July 1989 the SFI came under the state organisation Slovak Film Production Bratislava – Koliba (Slovenská fi lmová tvorba Bratislava – Koliba) up to 1st January 1991 when, by decision of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic (MC SR), the Slovak Film Institute – National Cinematographic Centre was established as an independent public contributory organisation managed by the MC SR. Hence, by delimitation, the SFI also acquired producer rights to the archived fi lms which were made before 1991 by Slovak Film Production.

The Slovak Film Institute played a part in the preparation of the extensive publication entitled History of Slovak Cinema (Dejiny slovenskej kinematografie, 1997); the second, updated issue of the book has been published in 2016.

In 2001, the SFI became a full member of the prestigious International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF).

In 2002, the SFI published its fi rst DVD (Pictures of the Old World/Obrazy starého sveta, dir. Dušan Hanák, 1972); since then it has published dozens of other DVDs in over 500,000 copies.

In 2002, the SFI started to implement the longterm integrated audiovisual information system project, SK CINEMA, for processing, storing, interconnecting, organising, searching and presenting information from the SFI’s individual departments.

In 2006, the Government adopted the draft Project of the Systematic Restoration of Audiovisual Cultural Heritage with the objective of rescuing cinematographic and audiovisual works and gradually making them accessible to the public. This is the SFI’s long-term priority project.

In 2008, SFI’s shop Klapka.sk was opened. It presents a broad offer of fi lmological literature, DVDs and CDs and other materials.

Since 2011, in association with the Radio and Television of Slovakia, the SFI has implemented the national project entitled Digital Audiovision in order to systematically digitise the audiovisual heritage and make it accessible. Two specialised digitisation workplaces are part of the project. SFI’s digitisation workplace is located in the basement of Cinema Lumière in Bratislava. The national Digital Audiovision project was concluded on 30 November 2015; however, it will be retained until 2021.

In September 2011, Cinema Lumière was opened in Bratislava. The cinema is operated by the SFI. ◀

distribution in 2018

4—5

— text: Miro Ulman — Backstage — photo: ARINA —

2018:

Return to Normality In 2018, 234,446 viewers attended cinemas for all the Slovak premièred fi lms which is 44,317 viewers fewer than the attendance at the third best-attended fi lm of the previous year, Kidnapping (Únos). But one should not have unrealistic expectations. The year 2017, with 1,431,297 viewers at domestic fi lms, was exceptional, and now we are merely returning to normality.

A look at the statistics reveals that in 2018 the attendance at domestic fi lms was lower than in the previous three years but, compared with 2014, when 228,537 viewers visited cinemas, last year’s result is somewhat better.

Total gross box office takings dropped year-on-year by 4.27% but still amounted to Euro 33,040,891 which is the second highest amount since Slovakia gained independence.

Total attendance decreased by 10.88% to 5,964,768 viewers but was still the fourth highest since 1993. The share of domestic fi lms (including non-première titles and minority co-productions) in the total attendance was 4.21%.

While four domestic fi lms exceeded 100,000 viewers in 2017, last year not one managed to do so. The best-attended Slovak fi lm Backstage att racted 64,029 viewers. However, the previous year was a record one in terms of productions.

Up to 34 full-length Slovak and co-production fi lms and blocks of fi lms were made (27 in 2017) and of these only 14 were minority co-productions. But eight of them will only receive their distribution première this year.

Last year 29 Slovak full-length fi lms and blocks of fi lms were released in cinemas – 13 feature fi lms (of these 8 minority co-productions), 13 documentaries (2 minority co-productions), one animated fi lm and two animated blocks of fi lms – six episodes of the series The Websters (Websterovci) and the block of fi lms, Mimi & Lisa – Christmas Lights Mystery (Mimi a Líza – Záhada vianočného svetla) in which the new 26-minute Christmas special complemented six episodes of the Mimi & Lisa series. Two mid-length documentaries also received their première – The Bright Spot (Svetlé miesto) directed by Dušan Trančík and March or Die (Pochoduj alebo zomri) by Michael Kaboš. Two short

Slovak animated fi lms were screened prior to the main fi lm in cinemas – Fifi Fatale by Mária Kralovič prior to Freedom (Sloboda) and Monster (Monštrum) by Martin Snopek prior to The Last Self-Portrait (Posledný autoportrét).

Spirit of Jaguar (Tieň jaguára) by Pavol Barabáš was the best-attended domestic documentary with 4,915 viewers and Toman became the most successful minority co-production with 17,295 viewers.

Twelve distribution companies released Slovak fi lms in cinemas; the Association of Slovak Film Clubs (ASFK) with eight domestic premières was again the most active in the field. These premières also included 10 mid-length fi lms from the documentary series Female First (Prvá) which is registered as a single title by the Union of Film Distributors of the Slovak Republic (UFD).

Last year, only one production company, Reminiscencie, released its fi lm direct into cinemas, without collaborating with the standard distributors and outside of the plan of premières of the UFD. As the screenings of Sad Languages (Smutné jazyky), made by Anna Grusková, with just two exceptions ended as non-commercial projections with Q&A sessions, we decided not to include this title in the attendance statistics, but it is included in the total production of domestic fi lms.

Last year, not only the total attendance of domestic fi lms, but also the average attendance per screening dropped, almost three-fold – from 61.67 viewers per screening of a premièred 100-per cent Slovak fi lm or a majority co-production in 2017 – to 22.87 viewers in 2018. The feature fi lm Backstage (33.38) and documentary Female First (47.25) had the highest average attendances. ◀

Distribution of premièred Slovak and co-production fi lms in Slovakia in 2018 slovak title / english title

director

year of production

1.

Backstage / Backstage

Andrea Sedláčková

2018

SK/CZ

15-03

1,918

64,029

327,644

2.

Dôverný nepriateľ / Intimate Enemy

Karel Janák

2018

SK/CZ

16-08

1,932

45,905

261,479 Continental fi lm

3.

Pivnica / The Cellar

Igor Vološin

2018

SK/RU/CZ

27-09

807

16,602

91,392

Itafi lm

4.

Tlmočník / The Interpreter

Martin Šulík

2018

SK/CZ/AT

01-03

757

16,111

79,587

Garfield fi lm

5.

Dubček / Dubček

Laco Halama

2018

SK/CZ

19-04

804

11,809

59,461

Forum Film

6. Tieň jaguára / Spirit of Jaguar

Pavol Barabáš

2018

SK

11-10

231

4,915

13,382

ASFK

7.

Mimi a Líza - Záhada Katarína Kerekesová, vianočného svetla / Mimi and Lisa Ivana Šebestová - Christmas Lights Mystery

2018

SK/CZ

22-11

156

4,858

21,741

Magic Box

Válek / Válek

Patrik Lančarič

2018

SK

03-05

222

4,855

13,858

ASFK

Websterovci / The Websters Katarína Kerekesová

2018

SK/PL

20-09

262

4,047

16,963

Magic Box

2018

SK

20-09

77

1,756

6,455

Filmtopia

Okupácia 1968 < Jevdokja Moskvina, Linda Dombrovszky, Maria Elise Scheidt, Magda Szymków, Stefan Komandarev > / Occupation 1968 2018 SK/CZ/BG/PL/HU 22-06 77 1,681 4,876

Filmtopia

8.

9.

10.

11.

Niečo naviac / An Extra Something

Palo Kadlečík, Martin Šenc

country of release numbers of admissions gross box origin date * screenings office (€)

distributor Bontonfi lm

12.

Dežo Ursiny 70 / Dežo Ursiny 70

Maroš Šlapeta, Matej Beneš

2018

SK

13-12

93

806

2,114

ASFK

13.

Posledný autoportrét / The Last Self-Portrait

Marek Kuboš

2018

SK

06-09

112

765

1,113

ASFK

14.

Prípad Kalmus / Crazy Against the Nation

Adam Hanuljak

2018

SK

06-12

39

635

478

ASFK

15.

Kapela / The Band

Ladislav Kaboš

2018

SK/CZ

24-10

61

454

1,437

MEDIA FILM

16.

Inde / Elsewhere

Juraj Nvota, Marian Urban

2018

SK/CZ

15-11

40

436

414

ASFK

17.

Parralel / Parralel Movie

Matyas Brych, Vladimír Kriško

2018

SK

31-05

266

344

1,564

Magic Box

18.

Prvá / Female First < Jana Bučka, Peter Kerekes, Tereza Križková, Zuzana Liová, Lenka Moravčíková-Chovanec, Marek Šulík, Róbert Šveda > 2013 - 2016

SK

30-08

4

189

387

19.

Svetlé miesto / The Bright Spot **

Dušan Trančík

2018

SK

27-09

10

135

285 Filmpark studio

20.

Vycestovacia doložka pre Dubčeka / Travel Clearence for Alexander Dubček

Juraj Lihosit

2018

SK

06-12

18

22

74 Continental fi lm

7,886

180,354

Sub-total 100% Slovak fi lms, majority co-productions and 50/50

ASFK

904,704

1.

Toman / Toman

Ondřej Trojan

2018

CZ/SK

18-10.

621

17,295

99,567

2.

Keď draka bolí hlava / When Dragon Has a Headache

Dušan Rapoš

2018

CZ/SK

25-10

736

15,899

78,352 Continental fi lm

Forum Film

3. Čertovské pero / The Magic Quill

Marek Najbrt

2018

CZ/SK

29-11

710

9,351

45,168 Continental fi lm

4.

Jan Palach / Jan Palach

Robert Sedláček

2018

CZ/SK

30-08

425

7,845

36,887

CinemArt SK

5.

Hmyz / Insect

Jan Švankmajer

2018

CZ/SK

15-03

82

1,004

2,413

PubRes

6.

Sloboda / Freedom

Jan Speckenbach

2017

DE/SK

22-03

97

796

1,636

ASFK

7.

Doktor Martin: Zločin v Beskydách / Doc Martin: Greatest Case

Petr Zahrádka

2018

CZ/SK

06-12

93

744

3,558

PubRes

8. Kvetinárstvo / The Flower Shop

Ruben Desiere

2017

BE/SK

18-03

20

526

435

Filmtopia

Môj neznámy vojak / My Uknown Soldier

Anna Kryvenko

2018

CZ/LV/SK

16-08

24

308

573

Filmtopia

9.

10. Cirkus Rwanda / Circus Rwanda

Michal Varga

2018

CZ/SK

13-10

41

294

1,122

Filmtopia

Pochoduj alebo zomri / March or Die **

Michael Kaboš

2018

CZ/SK

28-11

2

30

108

MEDIA FILM

2,851

54,092

269,819

TOTAL All premièred Slovak and co-production fi lms

10,737

234,446

1,174,523

TOTAL All Slovak and co-production fi lms screened in 2017

11,399

250,984

1,219,591

11.

Sub-total Minority co-productions

source: Union of Film Distributors of the Slovak Republic (Únia fi lmových distribútorov SR) note: The fi lms are sequenced based on the number of viewers. * dd-mm / ** mid-length fi lm

2018 in feature fi lm

6â&#x20AC;&#x201D;7

Memory Tracks and Genre Calls of 2018 Do filmu treba dostaĹĽ viac majstrovstva

— text: Katarína Mišíková — photo: Filmpark production | ATTACK FILM | ARINA | FURIA FILM —

In 2018, feature production was poorer than the previous year’s production, as regards the number of works and genres. While, in 2017, eleven majority films and ten minority co-productions received their cinema premières, last year there were only five majority and eight minority titles. The film year 2018 can celebrate neither attendance records nor festival response, as was the case in 2017.

— Dubček —

— Intimate Enemy —

A decline in productivity and efficiency within one year does not automatically have to mean a crisis, particularly if we take into account the average preparation time required for films and the number of premières announced for 2019. Despite the lustreless overall impression, films made in 2018 are part of the continuing trends of Slovak cinema.

The Czech Republic remains the dominant co-production partner of Slovak films; there are consistently more and more collaborations not only in funding but also in concepts and the creative background, last year mainly in Dubček (Dubček, dir. L. Halama), Backstage (Backstage, dir. A. Sedláková) and Intimate Enemy (Dôverný nepriateľ, dir. K. Janák). Twenty-five years after the break-up of Czecho-Slovakia, Slovak cinema is more Slovak-Czech than it was at the beginning of its independence and, from the creative and thematic perspectives, the dynamics of this bond become even more organic.

At the same time, an extension of co-production bonds into new territories is noticeable, for instance in the casting of stars of European art films in The Interpreter (Tlmočník, dir. M. Šulík) and The Cellar (Pivnica, dir. I. Voloshin), or by hiring the Ukrainian director of The Cellar. If we add two minority art films, the Belgian-Slovak The Flower Shop (La fleurière/Kvetinárstvo, dir. R. Desiere) and the German-Slovak Freedom (Freiheit/Sloboda, dir. J. Speckenbach) which offer a glimpse of post-socialist themes “from the outside”, the Europeanisation of Slovak cinema is highly visible.

Two lines dominated Slovak feature film in 2018. The first is associated with the reflection of the “eight” anniversaries, the second with the development of popular genres. It needs to be said that, just as in the tendency to make international co-productions, none of these tendencies is new either, and all are based on the priorities of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund. Can the ideal ratio of influence of the priorities of support from public funds, on the one hand, and internal creative potential on the other, be determined on the basis of the current form of Slovak cinema?

Let us first look at the films dedicated to the common Czech-Slovak history. Despite the official celebrations of the centenary of Czechoslovakia, last year not one feature film with this theme received its première in our country and the film reflection of the past was focused primarily on the period of World War II, the advent of communism and the invasion in 1968. Films about the turning points in years ending with an “eight” are characterised by an effort to work with historical facts and to incorporate archive materials directly into the narrative of fictional stories; however, they differ in their approach to treatment of the theme. Dubček and the minority film Jan Palach (Jan Palach, dir. R. Sedláček) relive the invasion by the Warsaw Pact forces. Both films may be understood as memorials to the victims of the occupation, and their reverent

2018 in feature fi lm

8—9

pathos corresponds to that, but they differ in form and emotional tone. They are not biographies, as both focus only on a segment of the lives of the protagonists.

In Dubček the hero, during his last journey to Prague which ended in the fateful accident, returns in his memories to the Prague Spring and its suppression.

In turn, Jan Palach follows the final months of the life of the most tragic symbol of the invasion. In Dubček, staged historical events are complemented by archive audio and visual materials and the retrospective level of the narration is permeated by the protagonist’s inner monologue. Thus, by means of procedures close to docudrama, Halama presents a historically correct rendering of the events and clarifies the importance of Alexander Dubček in the reform movement of socialism with a human face. Even though this procedure is formally frequently spectacular (for instance when the staged scene of Dubček’s jump into the water fades into newspaper pictures, or during his speech upon his return home after signing the Moscow Protocol in which the voice of the highly convincing Adrian Jastraban is mixed with an authentic radio recording of Dubček’s voice), it mostly leads to an illustrated

Unfortunately, last year’s popular genres offer rather fewer analytical inspirations than the films about history. interpretation of history. The fi lm’s strength is its comprehensibility; in turn, its weakness is its lack of inventiveness. Accordingly, instead of interpreting the turning point in history or the politician’s personality, Dubček comes across rather as a hagiography of an ivory-towered idealist remote from reality. What could be really interesting in his legacy, for instance his own comparison of himself to a hyphen between two eras, is overlooked in this film. He comes out of it, again given in his own words, as a good-luck charm that one can show off with. This impression is topped off with the celebratory quotes in the opening and closing credits from the English historian, Ralf Dahrendorf, and the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, quotes which set their seal upon Dubček’s contribution with voices from the “democratic” West.

While Dubček took the path of illustration, by contrast Jan Palach is characterised by an effort to make a reconstruction. Sedláček offers audiences a description of the events leading to Palach’s tragic act and the opportunity to seek out his psychological motivations in them. He does this not by direct integration of historical materials into the narrative but by having

history unfold against the backdrop of Palach’s everyday life: the audiences watch the social events along with the protagonist, the preparation for his immolation and then the act itself. The film does not present any new interpretation of history but, by incorporating religious symbols of purgation, it invokes the sacredness of the secret of Palach’s sacrifice and leads audiences to contemplate it.

By contrast, another minority co-production, the portrait of the anti-hero Toman (Toman, dir. O. Trojan), captures the rise and fall of a high-ranking communist official who secured money for the Communist Party by way of illegal rackets, thereby also becoming rich himself. The destiny of a figure of the Third Czechoslovak Republic, little known to the general public which concerns Slovakia too, provides excellent material for depicting the period of transformation between the end of the war and the communist coup, as well as an exemplary case of a pro-regime opportunist ultimately overthrown by the regime.

Trojan captures breaking historical events and key figures of the political scene (in particular, the debunking of the myth surrounding the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Masaryk, is interesting) and, just like Halama in Dubček, he uses archive material, partly staged, partly authentic, to complete the story. Hence, he purveys a credible account of the atmosphere of the period with its absurd contradictions and depicts the moral ambivalence of the real persons involved.

Somewhat paradoxically, the fact that the film is less than convincing is largely due to the charisma of the leading actor, Jiří Macháček, – the aura of a “laid-back guy” permeates from his interpretation of a villain.

And so Toman gives the impression less of a demonicMacbethian Frank Underwood from House of Cards and more of a morally indifferent ruffian who fails to mesmerise as much as he could.

The Interpreter takes another path to reflect history. The film confronts the traumas of victims of the Holocaust with the traumas of the culprits by means of a story from the present time. Šulík draws on factual sources and archive materials in the film, but the interest lies more in the significance of history and its interpretation for the present than in factual history. As a film-discourse, it loses in formal effectiveness through the prevalence of dialogue scenes at the cost of stylistic invention; however, through the motifs of a journey and catharsis, it thematises the concepts of trauma, guilt and reconciliation within the Central European territory, affords a non-simplified view of the era of the Slovak State, the Holocaust and communism and, instead of a historical interpretation, it opens up the possibility of a dialogue with history for the audiences.

Unfortunately, last year’s popular genres offer rather fewer analytical inspirations than the fi lms about history. Backstage, a hip-hop dance film, introduces a new genre impulse. The somewhat predictable

— Backstage —

story follows the route of amateur dancers to achieving fame in front of TV cameras. It builds on contrasting motifs (horizontals of Slovakia – verticals of Prague, the individual – the team, passion for dance – business, relationships – success, home – the world) and simply depicted characters. Its problem is not naivety – which is quite acceptable within the genre – but rather the mimic colouring used in order to render the story’s moralising more attractive. It reveals the other side of show business but, at the same time, it makes full use of what it seeks to criticise: it is based on the popularity of TV competitions and story clichés, it doesn’t give its characters a credible social dimension (for instance characters from the Eastern Slovak town of Svit talk in a Western Slovak dialect) and it wholly forfeits the potential to capture the authentic flavour of the current urban culture through street dance. Then, the most interesting impetus underlying this fi lm, possibly just for teenagers, is the question of who this fi lm is addressed to: the poor wretches on their couches who expend their last mobile phone credit to vote for their favourites or the crowd who shift their favour within a split second from one fastbrewed celebrity to another?

Intimate Enemy also focuses on the dark side of current life – on the snares inherent in modern technologies that should make life easier but, if they get out of hand, they can start controlling people’s lives. The story follows a young couple whose lives become subordinated to their smart house. Although this is by no means an inventive theme within the international context, this metaphor of the conflict between man and machine, emotion and algorithm, has quite a dynamic story and surprising dénouement. However, its weakness is the inconsequentially constructed causality and, due to this, also the low probability of the plot.

The second film in the thriller genre, The Cellar, ultimately turned out considerably worse, although it is the genre designation that is most problematic here.

The film stumbles between being a psychological drama about a marriage in crisis (the relationship between the main characters), a detective story (investigation of a murder) and a psycho-thriller (the detention and torture of the murderer by the victim’s father). However, what the story should be built on fails in every potential comprehension of the story: the psychological credibility of the characters with whom the audience should build a relationship and through whom they would experience the anguish of loss, alienation, guilt and the final moral dilemma. Instead, in The Cellar we encounter characters practically devoid of any defining characteristics, who move from one place to another, who act without any deeper motivations and deliver their lines in a “metallic” post-synchronisation. Not even the visually impressive chiaroscuro concept of some scenes has the chance to balance this scriptwriting incompleteness and to give tension to the story.

2018 in feature fi lm

10 — 11

Films dedicated to our history provided diverse paths to film memory and used various functions of collective reminiscence from films “made to order” up to a dialogue with history.

Let us return to the question posed in the introduction to this brief assessment. A guaranteed relation between social order and the needs of the author’s account cannot be assumed for certain. Films dedicated to our history provided diverse paths to film memory and used various functions of collective reminiscence from films “made to order” up to a dialogue with history. It transpires that questioning history and formulating thoughts about it by way of questions can be more stimulating than simply illustrating it by fi lm. The initiative to support popular genres in our cinematography or its international potential should be based in particular on the consequential preparation of scripts because, while the visual aspect of so-called genre fi lms appears to be consistently better mastered, they continue to suffer from inconsistencies and clichés in the narrative. And, ultimately, Slovak feature fi lm should definitely not give up on that segment of cinema which has functions that are exclusively artistic and are predicated on the needs of authors’ expression and audience reflection. ◀

— The Cellar —

2018 in documentary fi lm

— text: Erik Binder — photo: ALEF FILM & MEDIA – Richard Köhler | Mandala Pictures | MEDIA FILM – Ladislav Kaboš —

— Elsewhere —

About Turning Points in History and the Lives of Personalities 2018 was a year for anniversaries. In particular, the fiftieth anniversary in relation to events that we would rather not call to mind, but we have to, in order to avoid having history repeat itself. And so filmmakers also had their say. However, there were also anniversaries of a more celebratory nature, for instance the centenary of the Czechoslovak Republic. Or 25 years from the inception of independent Slovakia.

If the year before last year was under the sign of a huge commercial success of Slovak feature films, with even various historical charts being overwritten, in 2018, this kind of domestic film production “returned to normal” and, truth be told, there wasn’t much to exult about. The Cellar (Pivnica), Dubček, The Interpreter (Tlmočník), Intimate Enemy (Dôverný nepriateľ) and Backstage did not have the commercial potential of the representatives of popular genres in 2017, and so there was a larger space in cinemas for documentary production.

Ultimately, the themes were there to make films about.

First of all, there were the anniversaries referred to above.

Did the authors make full use of their potential or were the films just compulsory rides striving to remind the nation that the élite in the world of art have history at their fingertips and understand the broader context?

Slovak (and co-production) documentaries made in the previous year were full of black-and-white shots of tanks and people who moved chaotically among them. Well, at least some of them and they enjoyed the greatest publicity: Occupation 1968 (Okupácia 1968), My Unknown Soldier (Môj neznámy vojak), Válek, Travel

→

2018 in documentary fi lm

12 — 13

Clearance for Alexander Dubček (Vycestovacia doložka pre Dubčeka); and somewhere in the subtext they were also present in Crazy Against the Nation (Prípad Kalmus) and The Bright Spot (Svetlé miesto).

Possibly the best result was achieved when foreign filmmakers looked at the events of August 1968 in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Occupation 1968 and My Unknown Soldier have a legible author’s signature and they leave the impression that nothing similar would have been made in our own country in this relatively experimental way. In the first title, five directors from Hungary, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria and Russia provided a non-standard look at the occupation via “occupiers” from the individual countries. Older men reminisce about the difficult period and the spectator has no reason to hate. He just sees “normal men” who live their lives like everybody else. However, each episode of the project made under the auspices of Peter Kerekes is drafted differently, which considerably increases its information value and decreases the potential for tedium (the film is over two hours long). We get the farthest from the main theme in the Bulgarian contribution as a long-forgotten murder, as if made for Sherlock Holmes, is re-opened. At the same time, a certain sense of guilt on the part of the occupied people is mostly

whole issue; nevertheless, Válek simply remains controversial, up to and even beyond the closing credits.

But Alexander Dubček enjoys great respect and popularity among Slovaks (and not just among his own people) despite a certain controversiality; he personifies a non-violent revolt against the power of the dictatorship and the project of so-called socialism with a human face. The documentary Travel Clearance for Alexander Dubček (dir. Juraj Lihosit) only serves to confirm this view and, at the same time, attests how respected this politician was across the Western world. The repercussions of the events of the summer of 1968 for Dubček’s private life best demonstrate the absurdity of the regime and its malign influence on everyone who stood up against it in any way. Unfortunately, this period is presented in the film mainly by means of not very cleverly inserted staged sequences depicting activities of the Secret Service. However, the documentary wins last year’s imaginary duel between the feature and documentary films about Dubček. By the way, something like this could serve as a general characteristic for last year’s Slovak film production.

Sad Languages (Smutné jazyky), revealing another dark side of the Slovak and Czech past, unjustly sits in the shadow of the above films. In reality, the “sad

Slovak (and co-production) documentaries were full of black-and-white shots of tanks and people who moved chaotically among them. Well, at least some of them and they enjoyed the greatest publicity. sensed here and that is the main reason why the view from outside is so important.

The co-production film My Unknown Soldier by director Anna Kryvenko, who is of Ukrainian origin and works in the Czech Republic, suffers from dreariness despite its shorter length (80 minutes). The documentary, distinctly stylised in terms of image and sound, tries to avoid talking heads and it must be stated that it provides interesting audiovisual content within the investigation into the past and opening old wounds.

However, the question remains whether such a concept would not have been better suited as a thirty-minute contribution to the mosaic of Occupation 1968.

The invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in 1968 is such a fixture in our history that it has to be reflected in every portrait documentary about a personality who lived at that time. Miroslav Válek was a poet of his period during the political-social thaw in the 1960s; after the occupation he was, in turn, a politician of his period.

Do these two things go together at all? How to express this contradiction on the screen when the protagonist has long been gone and, as an introvert, didn’t reveal overmuch during his lifetime? Such personalities acquire the attribute “controversial”. Together with many period observers, Patrik Lančarič tries to shed more light on the

languages” are the dying German dialects of Carpathian Germans living in Slovakia. This phenomenon is also related to the so-called Beneš Decrees and the forced expulsion of Germans from our territory. Hence, we get into the thematic area of the operation of the totalitarian Slovak State and its influence on the future of the local minorities.

Dušan Trančík presented the history of the establishment of the first Czechoslovak Republic within the pleasant environment of Luhačovice in his midlength film The Bright Spot. In it he also touches upon the post-revolution history of Slovakia when we move from the pleasant environment of the spa to shots of politicians in tawdry suits who for us, and not solely for this reason, are less likeable than prominent visitors to Luhačovice in the first half of the 20th century.

The events of 1968 also affected the unconventional artists, Alex Mlynárčik and Peter Kalmus. Juraj Nvota’s and Marian Urban’s documentary Elsewhere (Inde) focuses on the major part of Mlynárčik’s life and by means of the artist’s visits shows Paris as a free anti-pole to Czechoslovak totality. On the other hand, the demonstrations in Paris evoke memories of the domestic ones. In Adam Hanuljak’s documentary Crazy Against the Nation, Peter Kalmus does not linger over past ex-

periences although, from time to time, he mentions detention at the hands of the police. The artist is mostly interested in pointing out the collective loss of memory which is related to the nostalgic idealisation of matters from the distant past. The result in the film is the yearning for a return to the “old golden times” (fascism or communism) and whoever links them with the commitment of crimes automatically becomes the enemy of the state. One documentary cannot suffice to answer the question why this is so, but Hanuljak and Kalmus have duly warned about this situation.

Let us turn from artists to directors and musicians. Marek Kuboš had not completed any film for a long period of time, which is what he decided to talk about in his last documentary. And just as he started his career with a self-portrait a long time ago, he has now completed the circle with The Last Self-Portrait (Posledný autoportrét). It is an unusually introspective work for our country which, among other things, deals with the issue of the openness of the protagonists and respondents in front of the camera. Everything associated with this can sometimes get irritating, so it’s no wonder that most filmmakers give preference to the reduced

Crazy Against the Nation —

amount of red tape entailed in the making of feature films. The Gypsy Band Lomnické Čháve from the sub-Tatra region has to resolve more down-to-earth problems, for instance how to travel as comfortably as possible with a huge double bass around the surrounding villages and to towns farther away. The problem is solved by buying a used van, but the problems, so to speak existential ones, are just beginning here. In his documentary The Band (Kapela), the director Ladislav Kaboš partially veers away from showing the problems of life in Roma settlements, as he focuses primarily on the functioning of one music band and its members. So the result was not the expected social docudrama but, due to its structure, a positively tuned, almost a feature film, with a finale at the Pohoda Festival.

Let us reflect that a roughly one-hour recording of the commemorative concert in Bratislava of October 2017 is lurking beneath the title Dežo Ursiny 70; the concert was organised on the occasion of the 70th birthday of musician Dežo Ursiny, which he did not live to see.

Ursiny’s fans, in particular, will appreciate the concert, divided into three parts. It is a conventionally made re-

cording of the event with interesting guests. The documentary filmmakers, Matej Beneš and Maroš Šlapeta, couldn’t really spoil anything.

By way of the Roma minority, we get to another repeat theme in last year’s documentary production and that is the business of being different. Fortunately, filmmakers have stopped perceiving the Roma minority merely as something exotic; for them it has gradually become the object of observation and the search for the substance of the problems in the life of this ethnic minority in our society (Ladislav Kaboš’s films can serve as a good example). Pavol Barabáš looked into the heart of the primeval Amazonian forest and brought back a portrait of a native tribe, so far untouched by technological development, living according to their own rules.

Spirit of Jaguar (Tieň jaguára) reminds us of human naturalness in its purest form, but it is left up to you to decide whether the impression you get from the film is that we are distancing ourselves farther from happiness by living in the dehumanised society, or whether you would never, at any cost, exchange your life for the life of the native tribe. Barabáš and his co-workers do not impose the final decision on you at any cost, although

The Band —

they admire the life of the native tribe.

We can continue in the positivist approach of filmmakers to otherness with the documentary An Extra Something (Niečo naviac). Its protagonist Dorotka has Down’s Syndrome but she is “an extra something” for her parents and siblings in the best sense of the word.

If she is happy, there is no reason for her surroundings to be unhappy, she would sense it and become upset herself. Palo Kadlečík’s and Martin Šenc’s film is free from all the conflicts and hardships that her family must have experienced in raising Dorotka. Everyone is able to figure out what these were; the message of the film is somewhere else and really “an extra something” for the audiences that they should take away from the cinema. We can apply this statement with a clear conscience to practically all Slovak documentaries (including minority co-productions which we have treated only marginally in this text). However, this cannot be generally stated about last year’s domestic fiction production. ◀

2018 in animated fi lm

14 — 15

The Decline in Quality Was Replaced by a Spark of Hope — text: Mária Horváth Demečková — photo: Visionfi lm | Fool Moon | VŠMU —

The panel discussion on Slovak animated production held during the Slovak Film Week in April 2018 suggested that there remains a certain contradiction in the issue of insufficient quality and quantity of domestic animated production. But it is encouraging that, after the absence of the Slovak competition section at Fest Anča in Žilina, the key Slovak festival devoted to animation, experienced two years ago, last year it returned to the programme.

Parralel Movie —

The Slovak competition was not compiled due to a lack of (high quality) animated films, but last year the situation was different. From the thirty-eight Slovak fi lms entered, the jury selected eleven for the finale.

However, it has to be said that some of these films were screened in the non-competition selection at the Žilina Festival in 2017. 39 Weeks, 6 Days (39 týždňov, 6 dní, dir.

Joanna Kożuch, Boris Šima) refers to the expectation of offspring and develops the theme of the relationship between parent and child in the prenatal stage. In Chilli (Chilli, dir. Martina Mikušová) the position of the woman changes from victim to accessory to crimes within the cage of a complex partnership, while The Contrast (Kontrast, dir. Barbora Bárková) is in conflict with such a progressive reflection on a relationship. Even though the theme is similar, it is based on the cliché of gender

opposition with a woman as the victim. In her fi lm Yellow (Žltá), Ivana Šebestová tells, in turn, a story about the search for female identity and freedom.

The poetic treatment of a story inspired by the book About Red Riding Hood Who Danced with Wolves (O Červenej Čiapočke, ktorá tancovala s vlkmi) was the most interesting animated fi lm at last year’s Fest Anča in visual and thematic terms. Auuuna (Aúúúna, dir. Lina Šuková) offers a brand new take on the classical fairytale, the narration is modern and it revolves around overcoming the fear of the unknown and searching for inner freedom in direct connection to nature.

The way to a person’s heart is allegedly through their stomach and the couple in Food (Food, dir. Michaela Mihalyiová) also know something about it. If Auuuna was inspiring in visual and thematic terms, Food is a

remarkable piece, especially with regard to its technical terms. Cut-out animation together with paper-folding enhance the fi lm by another dimension and create a comic but still interesting parallel between eating habits and body language. The co-production film Here and Here (Tu a tady) by the same director, which compares the lives of people living in diametrically different towns, is in a similar vein. And the purely Slovak film SelFISH (SelFISH, dir. Lukáš Figeľ) treats the infinite pride that always comes before a fall.

Other fi lms from the Fest Anča competition section (including the series The Websters/Websterovci and The Contrast mentioned above) were made in co-production with a foreign partner. The audio and visually saturated images of drawn animation in Journey (Journey, dir. Marek Jasaň) reflect the inner worlds of the characters. However, the inside of the main hero is empty, un-

with the surrealist atmosphere of the rich content in terms of interpretation. No wonder, then, that Poetika Anima got into the short film competition at the A-list Warsaw IFF. In addition to the above film, the small jury of the Áčko Student Film Festival also chose the two-minute fi lm Craft (Remeslo) directed by Laura Kočanová, who uses drawn animation and links a creative idea with situational humour and an amusing pun at the end.

Several of the films referred to above had already been screened at reputable world festivals prior to Fest Anča. Untravel received its première at the Berlinale.

Yellow (Žltá) was included in the competition selection at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and audiences also had the opportunity to see this film at the International Animated Film Festival Animateka in Ljubljana or at the Lisbon Animated Film Festival

The Websters —

like the insides of random passersby with worlds filled with the motifs that characterise them. Untravel (Untravel, dir. Nedeljković and Nikola Majdak, Jr.) broached the highly topical themes of patriotism, tourism and emigration, but so did Woo-hoo! (Woo-hoo!, dir. Dávid Štumpf), the story of a young man’s unsuccessful dating, using the pixilation technique and drawing on the visual of the global phenomenon of BoJack within the virtual environment of an 8-bit game.

In the competition of last year’s Áčko Student Film Festival in Bratislava, the number of contributions increased two-fold on 2017; however, that still means that there were only two. Two but of high quality. The captivating film poem Poetika Anima (Poetika Anima, dir. Kriss Sagan) won; in this film minimalist drawing and non-narrative imagery function in symbiosis

Monstra where 39 Weeks, 6 Days was also screened. The latter film was also presented at the Warsaw IFF. In turn, the student project Chilli was screened at the prestigious Trieste Film Festival…

Foreign festivals are showing quite a lot of interest in our animated production or, we might say, Slovak animated film is forging a path to foreign festivals. This is not generally the case with domestic festivals. That is not to say that they have a negative attitude to our animated production or that the audiences would not be interested. The problem lies, specifically, in the fact that even if festivals have enough films to choose from, it frequently transpires that the films entered do not meet the required parameters (copyrights “after expiry date”) and cannot be included in the competition sections.

I think that Slovak animators use a variety of →

2018 in animated fi lm

16 — 17

Foreign festivals are showing quite a lot of interest in our animated production or, we might say, Slovak animated film is forging a path to foreign festivals.

Auuuna —

animation techniques extensively and, in addition to those already mentioned, we should also mention the lino-cut technique which is a characteristic of Monster (Monštrum). The new short film by Martin Snopek with the topical theme of the growth of despotism leading even to a disaster in the whole of society, was screened prior to the feature-length documentary The Last Self-Portrait (Posledný autoportrét, dir. Marek Kuboš). The short animated film Fifi Fatale by Mária Kralovič was screened prior to the German-Slovak film Freedom (Sloboda, dir. Jan Speckenbach); it depicts an episode from the life of a selfish beauty who seduces the visitors to a night club with her performance until an uninvited young man reveals the magic of her art.

Last year, cinema distribution also offered the first Slovak film comics and the second full-length animated title since Slovakia gained independence, Parralel Movie (Parralel, dir. Matyas Brych, Vladimír Kriško) which was made without financial support

from public funds. The fi lmmakers were inspired by Japanese anime and offered a multi-layered story to audiences, oscillating between a dream and reality; primarily, it talks about accepting one’s own fate.

Non-linear narration with flashbacks or retrospectives and the use of voice-over are characteristic of the individual chapters of the film. The main problem with Parralel Movie is that it makes explicit more than is required by an intelligent viewer.

Animated series were also released in cinema distribution last year. In this area of production, the director and producer Katarína Kerekesová occupied a significant position. Her Mimi & Lisa (Mimi a Líza) was already shown on cinema screens previously; however, last year, in addition to six episodes of the original series, a new episode from the lives of the inseparable friends Christmas Lights Mystery (Záhada vianočného svetla, made in collaboration with director Ivana Šebestová) was also presented in cinemas. And six episodes of Kerekesová’s 3D animated series The Websters

Poetika Anima —

(Websterovci) were also screened in cinemas.

In 2018, domestic filmmakers filling gaps in animated film was a feature of this area. A feature-length animated fi lm was made, TV series found their way into cinemas and short films were successful at festivals.

However, it would be necessary to further reflect on this branch of cinematography. ◀

review

Close Your Eyes and Look

— text: Eva Petrželová — photo: Fool Moon —

Young audiences (and not just child audiences) in Slovakia can watch the animated stories of Mimi and Lisa on TV, listen to them on radio, read them in books or even colour them in colouring books. Six episodes of the well-known TV series have even been presented in cinemas and now there is a new one – the 26-minute film Christmas Lights Mystery (Záhada vianočného svetla).

“Don’t think that I’m asleep. I am not. I am blind.

I see the world with my hands and ears. That’s how I also see my best friend Lisa,” says the little black-haired girl in a grey dress. This is Mimi. Through her the authors have managed to create an intimate incursion into the world of a sight-impaired girl which, to a certain extent, is limited but, at the same time, is enriched in many ways. On the other side there is blonde Lisa – with unkempt hair, direct and impetuous, wearing a polka dot dress that reflects the brightness of the world as she sees it. And it is these differences which help the heroines to complement each other in their imperfections and to understand what really matters for the functioning of true friendship. Their common experiences thus acquire the form of vivid images full of colour and incredible, even surreal, stories.

Every episode starts quite innocently but is slowly transformed into an adventure of the heroines with their neighbours who not only open their apartment doors to them but also the doors to fantasy, to as-yet unknown worlds. The individual stories are filled with real and fictitious creatures, a variety of structures and shapes, and the almost childish simplicity of the drawings only enhances this imaginative world. The original narrative brings unforced lessons and initiates the children’s audiences into tolerance and understanding of otherness which is natural.

We could deem help and friendship to be the common theme of all six short episodes. In addition, however, each part also contains a sub-theme related to Mimi and her search for positives in the constraints engendered by the fact that she is unable to see. She learns to play memory card-games by touch, look for the route by hearing… “I look like I feel,” she says when looking into a mirror.

Christmas time is a magical time and so is the mood of the new film about Mimi and Lisa, Christmas Lights Mystery. The neighbours have put up a Christmas tree on the square, like they used to in their childhood.

The problem starts when the Christmas lights disappear from the tree. Mimi and Lisa decide to find them and during their investigation they get into the long-past childhood of their neighbours where they find the answers and solve the mystery. In this apartment micro-world, the creators illustrate how child impetuousness can affect our lives all the way up to adulthood and, at the same time, just how little suffices to make us happy – to have friends willing to give us a second chance and to help us in need. The film not only depicts the boundless world of children’s imagination but also highlights the importance of (not only) the neighbour community living in peace and harmony. ◀

Mimi & Lisa – Christmas Lights Mystery ( Mimi a Líza – Záhada vianočného svetla, Slovakia/Czech Republic, 2018 ) DIRECTED BY Katarína

Kerekesová, Ivana Šebestová SCRIPT BY K. Kerekesová, I. Šebestová, Katarína Moláková COLLABORATION ON SCRIPT BY Anna

Vášová MUSIC Lucia Chuťková Džubáková LENGTH 67 min.

photo: Peter Kerekes —

18 — 19

review

— text: Eva Vženteková —

Howlers Underlying a Historical Eight Rather as if displaying an aversion to a certain officiousness of the documentary, Peter Kerekes is sparklingly cunningly capable of mangling reality so as to combine the serious content in his films together with entertainment. As regards the new opus Occupation 1968 (Okupácia 1968), which was made in extensive co-production, Kerekes is not, in effect, the sovereign author but the main producer. However, the film bears the hallmark of his supervision.

Kerekes has striven to maintain his insight and unifying concept in the five chapters of the film. The theme of Czechoslovakia’s occupation in 1968 is a challenging morsel highlighted by the film’s straightforward, so to speak, powerful title. It maps out the historical event by geographically extending over the five occupying countries. The determining film material was layered by exponents coming from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Germany and Bulgaria – representatives of the younger directing generation, with the exception of Bulgaria (Stephan Komandarev). Directly the first, Russian part, characteristically made by an author who no longer lives in Russia, came the closest to Kerekes’s crystallised stylistics of clarity and purity. Steadily, the authors do more and more to “conjure” with the material, most prominently in the Polish episode, and the least, in turn, in the last, Bulgarian one. From time to time sloweddown shots lyricise the image more than they give it importance. Together with the wandering of the camera (across the forest, archive) or the stereotypical exemplification (the flock of birds drifting below the sky, tapping on the piano in the forest, the question given to the ex-occupier about the choice to shoot accompanied by a glance at the bullet in his hand) they amplify the gra-

vity of nostalgia or pathos at the expense of the effectiveness of the content.

Even doubts about the parity position of the individual parts sneak in between the concept’s ambition and its formal accomplishment. Although the chronological and geographical equivalents allocated in advance can form a suitable, even a sophisticated, comparative framework, the internalisation of the historical theme by “pouring in” lyricised aesthetics in some places covers up for the lack of informative material which, for instance, is also supported by the repetition of some archive shots in another episode.

Disentangling the past by personal story, memory, letter, archive report, situation or media return, or the current position of the witnesses renders the historical theme more intimate and enlarges its public historical status. It was certainly demanding to determine the general position of today’s national and international spectator for whom the theme is made available. The heterogeneity of the directors’ views crossed this requirement by majority generation optics and the non-politicising report about a “silent war” and its conscript soldiers.

Right at the beginning of the film, representa-

tives of the central imperial power (Russia or the Soviet Union) comprehend the humiliation they have caused, they express empathy due to what they themselves experienced after the collapse of their empire. However, the feeling of guilt toward the former satellites is not present. Nor is there any existential anguish, protest against the repressive practices as in the later episodes, or equivocation about the myth as in the Bulgarian episode. The geopolitical logic of the empire is clear – it has to fortify its border bulwark. This almost anecdotal end in the epilogue scores an ominous parallel to the current disputes over the Russian-Ukrainian border.

That is why the closing credits dedicated to the memory of the 108 victims of the occupation armies of 1968 are a dignified ending to the film’s invasive anabasis, but they unnecessarily enclose the past in the past. All the more so as the memory of the Russian exponent in the film about the absence of an enemy in the occupied country is chilling. The colossal outrage that possessed the local population after the invasion of the armies only emphasised the self-preservational tendency not to respond by fighting, which is also confirmed by the

collegiate quote from a Polish letter: “I am full of anger but powerless”. The determining role of Russia in the consolidation of the post-war order made use of some of its satellites for the suppression of others. For vast Russia and the manoeuvring affinity of Bulgaria, this period is one of the sources of sentimentalised national memory in this film. Poland heroicises the greatest protest of its brothers, Hungary unexpectedly operates within its former territory and thus invokes a different kind of sentiment. The dictator of international “help” respects the still-fresh memories of the German war aggression and leaves its army beyond the borders. The parallel drawn between the speeches of the top Polish communist statesman and the awareness of the domestic popularity of Czechoslovakia’s top communist representative, or the parallel of the desertion of the German and Bulgarian soldier would be more prominent in the concept of non-parity national parts of the film.

Nevertheless, a spectator with an open mind has enough opportunities to work out his own contexts over the more than two-hour long communication with the theme. ◀

Occupation 1968 ( Okupácia 1968, Slovakia/Czech Republic/Poland/Bulgaria/Hungary, 2018 ) DIRECTED BY Evdokia Moskvina, Linda Dombrovszky, Maria Elisa Scheidt, Magda Szymków, Stephan Komandarev LENGTH 130 min.

photo: ASFK —

20 — 21

review

— text: Martin Palúch —

It’s No Longer Possible in Our Country Nowadays

In the opening credits, the director calls his full-length début The Last Self-Portrait (Posledný autoportrét) “a feature film by the documentary filmmaker Marek Kuboš”. Thus, he’s indicating that he has made a natural shift in his works from documentary to feature film. In this way the self-portrait, as a specific genre form, provides him – by the extent of appellative self-expression via questions posed to himself and others – with a functional balancing platform for rendering feelings evoked by the change he has experienced. It is this change that compels him to seek out new approaches to reality, to auteur works and, at the same time, to himself as a filmmaker, originally a documentary filmmaker.

As is clear from the film, after twenty years the author is fully aware of the fact that since he started making films – under Prime Minister Mečiar in the mid-1990s – the situation in society has changed considerably, as well as the creative opportunities and the conditions he then encountered as a human being and encounters now at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Current documentary filmmaking practice has changed, as also has the protagonist as the central subject of the documentary. Hence, at the symbolic level of the narrative, The Last Self-Portrait highlights the closure of one stage of Kuboš’s own production and, at the same time, draws attention to the director’s preparedness to come to terms with these new processes and to understand them with the unambiguous objective of sharing the acquired knowledge with the contemporary audience by means of a bold authorial gesture. He does so in an original and sophisticated manner, by personal example. He yearns to spiritually cleanse himself, both externally and internally, and, at the same time, to publicly come to terms with the perceived dying form of the romanticising and naïve concept he formerly started making documentaries with, when he deemed the documentary to be a way of faithfully portraying the surrounding world. If he doesn’t wish to deliberately mislead, the only alternative he currently perceives is to make feature fi lms.

The Last Self-Portrait comprises a surprising number of layers and it is not easy to contain all of them in the limited extent of this text. Let us at least indicate the most interesting questions that the film raises. The protagonist of the fi lm is the author who “portrays” himself whilst driving a car. It is the materialisation of the idea of a self-portrait into the narrative structure of the film. One of the not less important layers of significance is the interchangeability of the author – a protagonist relation which allows Kuboš to portray himself and, simultaneously, to interview his colleagues – documentary filmmakers – by filming them sitting in his car. Thereby, they automatically become protagonists of his self-portrait as he asks them questions not only about himself as an author but also as a human being.

Each respondent – director – thus unwittingly presents his own opinions on the crucial questions of documentary filmmaking, ethics or boundaries.

In addition, Kuboš, intentionally and resignedly, allows the protagonist of one of his older documentaries, whom he hurt most with his film, to film him and hence he comes to terms with the question of the author’s ethical responsibility for the subject being shot in a documentary, as if Kuboš, the filmmaker, wanted to transfer this responsibility to Kuboš, the protagonist.

He enhances this moment more explicitly in the staged sequence by duplicating his own character as he presents himself in a dual role during the dialogue with himself in the front seat of the car. In the hunting sequence he lets himself be diverted onto a path that he does not internally agree to, which symbolically results in the death of his unethical, compromised, selfish and domineering alter ego.

Kuboš’s film is made in a reflexive mode where we are clearly aware of the constructive principle when creating the film narrative about the world that we observe through the eyes of the subject – the author and, simultaneously, the protagonist. The image of the car’s windscreen and rear-view mirror in which the fi lm’s author is reflected provides a metaphor of the idea of projecting one’s own inside onto the world beyond the window. We are forced to act in it based on our own convictions and thus we actively transform it. However, in general, the issue of natural authenticity – acting, thinking and being – becomes the most problematic category. Reality per se also suffers from a lack of authenticity because it was replaced by the authenticity of artificial depiction in the world of digital media and →

review

22 — 23

television. Kuboš raises the question of ownership of our image and voice by highlighting the current forms of their misuse. These are themes that formerly appeared in his films Voice 98 (Hlas 98) and Just a Small Propaganda (Taká malá propaganda). He returns to them in The Last Self-Portrait through Jozef from Just a Small Propaganda and Jozef Pátrovič, a popular protagonist, in the negative sense of the word, of the commercial TV show Czecho Slovakia’s Got Talent (Česko Slovensko má talent). Whilst driving his car, Kuboš discloses that naturalness and authenticity are disappearing, largely out of concern and fear of misuse or violation of the rules imposed by an authority, which is related to the fear of publicly articulating the truth, for instance about those in authority. Th is fear is also essentially expressed by the unwillingness of the protagonists to sign the consent to disseminate their images and voices in the media unlimited in time and territory, i.e. the consent to film them for the purposes of the documen-

he became a documentary filmmaker, about how films used to be made; he reveals his solitude, his relationship with his mother, his yearning for a life-partner.

References to film projects that he made and didn’t make expose professional problems, and the wardrobe he inherited from his grandparents symbolically refers to personal problems. However, to remain human and honest is the most valuable precept.

Marek Kuboš’s feature documentary or documentary play is one of the most original works in docufiction in Slovakia. It was worth the fourteen years’ wait for it. No wonder then that the international jury of the International Competition of Feature Films at Art Film Fest 2018 in Košice awarded The Last Self-Portrait a Special Mention. ◀

tary. Kuboš states that if it was possible in the past – his short films are an example – today it’s no longer so easy. Documentary filmmaker Robert Kirchhoff perceptively notes that nowadays people are afraid of failure and poverty, being the two main stigmas incompatible with the idea of capitalism. From this perspective, Kuboš’s decision to become an authentic protagonist in his own fi lm is ethically pertinent. However, while attempting to shoot a fiction scene with the professional actor, Marek Majeský, a victorious smile flashes in his eyes over the imitation of authenticity when directing.

The personal level occupies a not negligible part of the self-portrait; in it the director talks about his private life and the path he took in life, about why The Last Self-Portrait ( Posledný autoportrét, Slovakia, 2018 ) SCRIPT, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, MUSIC, DIRECTED BY Marek Kuboš EDITED BY

Rado Dubravský CAST Jaro Sýkora, Jano B., Jozef Brezovský , Jozef Pátrovič and Soňa Balková, Jozef Drengubjak,

Anna Kubošová – Baková, Štefan Durčák, Veronika Brúderová, Marek Majeský, Soňa Holičková and Mário Homolka, Ivan Ostrochovský, Jaro Vojtek, Braňo Špaček, Zuza Piussi, Peter Kerekes and others LENGTH 72 min.

berlinale 2019

— text: Jaroslava Jelchová — photo: BFILM —

The Kite Is Flying to the Berlinale The short animated film The Kite (Šarkan) by Slovak filmmaker Martin Smatana is in the Generation Kplus competition section of films for children at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival (7-17 February 2019).

Four years ago, Smatana competed in the same section with his film Rosso Papavero and two years ago Little Harbour (Piata loď) by Iveta Grófová won the Crystal Bear awarded by the children’s audience.

“When Rosso Papavero was chosen for the Berlinale, it was actually via a coincidence. I was originally there only as a substitute for our school, as one film dropped out of the Academy of Performing Arts list one day before the deadline.

And eventually Rosso Papavero was chosen in Berlin as the sole representative of our school,” recalls Smatana about his success with his freshman exercise and then starts to talk about The Kite. “I have the impression that this time it was a rather more purposeful process and we were subconsciously focused on the Berlin deadline right from the start of production. No one dared say it out loud, but we somehow hoped that it would work out.”

Martin Smatana won at the Animarkt in Lodz with The Kite and thereby gained the opportunity to shoot in the Polish CeTA studio. He chose puppet animation which, in terms of time, space and money, is one of the more challenging techniques. But The Kite deals with a difficult topic as it seeks to explain to children how to come to terms with the loss of a loved one. It was very important for the filmmakers to achieve a balance of form and content, but the means of expression are in contrast with the theme itself. And so, a serious and, at the same time, agreeable film for children (and not only for children) got made. The puppets and props were mostly made out of fabrics and a variety of cloths and they are used in a way that creates an interesting visual aspect and atmosphere for the fictitious world, but also meaning. The Kite talks via images, it does not include any dialogues, which makes it even more universal. It was made in a co-production between the Slovak company BFILM, Czech BFILM.cz, FAMU and the Polish CeTA studio.

Slovakia has no other representative in the Festival’s programme apart from The Kite. However, several domestic films will be presented within the film mar-

ket (European Film Market). The Slovak-Czech film By a Sharp Knife (Ostrým nožom) by débuting director Teodor Kuhn will be screened there, as well as minority Slovak projects – the full-length début by Czech filmmaker Adam Sedlák Domestique (Domestik) and The Glass Room (Sklenená izba) by Julius Ševčík, the director of A Prominent Patient (Masaryk) which was presented at the Festival two years ago in the Berlinale Special section. The children’s film My Grandpa Is an Alien (Môj dedo spadol z Marsu, dir. Dražen Žarković, Marina Andree Škop), made in an extensive co-production between Croatia, Luxembourg, Norway, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bosna and Hercegovina will also be screened in the market.

The young Slovak director, Tereza Nvotová, will take part in the Berlinale Talents at the Festival. And, together with screenwriter Barbora Námerová, also in the ScripTeast workshop where their project in preparation, The Nightsiren (Svetlonoc) was included among the twelve best scripts for full-length feature films from Central and Eastern Europe. In turn, Wanda Adamík Hrycová will take part in the workshop for producers of documentaries from EU countries, Emerging Producers 2019.

Slovakia will be represented together with the Czech Republic and Slovenia on the Central European Cinema stand which aims to present the local audiovisual environment and production, and serves for working meetings between film professionals. It is under the aegis of the Slovak Film Institute which also prepared the catalogue Slovak Films 18 – 19, the bulletin Whatʼs Slovak in Berlin? and an English issue of the monthly Film.sk for the Festival. ◀

interview

24 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 25

The Value of Talking Without Words

— text: Verona Dubišová — photo: Miro Nôta —

Slovak animated filmmaker, Martin Smatana, studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and also at FAMU in Prague. Four years ago, he presented his film Rosso Papavero at the Berlinale in the Generation Kplus Section. This year his new film The Kite (Šarkan) is at the festival. It is also of interest because it presents a complex topic to child audiences.

The Kite is about a child’s view of their ageing grandfather, of death and the loss of a loved one. What attracted you to dealing with such themes in a film for children and how did you work with them?

I think that I had the child viewer subconsciously in mind all the time during the production. Because the theme is dangerous, it is actually a film about the fear of death, of the loss of a loved one but, at the same time, it should be for a child. When I started developing it, many people asked me if I’d gone mad. At that time, I read a lot about how to talk to children about such challenging questions, how to answer them, to tell the truth and not downplay it. At the same time, we tried to present the theme metaphorically, using symbols but in a way that is comprehensible for the child. We also spent a very long time developing the film because it was demanding, but substantial for us, to put some merriment, a perspective and hope into the story about death.

And what about your grandparents? Did you deal with similarly challenging topics when you were a child?

This idea is probably a result of the fact that we’ve talked quite a lot about this theme ever since I was young. Children are simply interested in knowing whether we are going to be here forever and where you go when you die. These are those difficult questions from a child that can trouble parents quite a lot. Actually, the film might possibly help them answer them.

What answers did you get to these questions?

I think that my grandfathers were maybe a bit more willing to answer them than other adults. For instance, my grandpa once told me a story about the wind. And we used it in the film with a small alteration. By the end of life, people are so withered and thin that a light wind is enough to blow them away. Actually, with time I see now that the older a man is, the more he realises that he has passed many years. But, at the same time, he is humbler and looks differently at the world, copes with it in a different way.

In The Kite you have created an adorable, alluring world which, on the one hand, uses relatively popular pastel shades but, on the other hand, does not aim to appeal at any cost. The film has a retro touch which results in part from the puppet animation and in part from the materials used.

This theme is so demanding that we became ever more and more aware that we needed to make the film as attractive, as childlike as possible in visual terms. For instance, we like it that our puppets don’t have all the parts of their faces, just eyebrows and eyes. We were inspired by the face-play of animals since people love cute dogs, very often just due to the expression of their eyes. It functions also because small children often read emotions from facial expressions – actually, it’s one of our very first abilities.

And another reason for this choice was to make a universal film. Without any spoken words, it can now be viewed by anybody. →

interview

26 — 27

So, you abandoned spoken words in order to reach wider audiences?

No, as a matter of fact, we never planned to have any dialogue. And for now, I don’t even wish to make films with spoken words. It is more valuable for me to be able to depict a story using gestures, facial expressions and body movements, to tell the story just through the image.

You studied animation at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava and at FAMU in Prague, you worked in an Estonian studio, you made The Kite in the Polish CeTA studio. What differences in the development and production of animated film do you see after such experience?

That’s a difficult question. The difference between the schools is quite clear for me. The atmosphere at VŠMU was definitely merrier. I even lived there. For a year I had no dormitory room, so I lived in the studio where I kept my stuff. We slept under the animation table. We quite literally lived for animation. The approach of the teachers is different in Prague. Communication and the overall approach are at a higher level; there it was so… more real. Those were less student times, at least for me. We had a lot of fun at VŠMU, in essence, we goofed around. At FAMU we were already trying to make the best films possible.

You have experience in the Polish CeTA studio thanks to the fact that you won the pitching event at Animarkt in Lodz the year before last. How do you rate such an experience?

It was at a really high level there. We had a fully equipped hall, we were granted three assistants. Actually, Poland is a country with animation, particularly puppet animation, at a very high level. We didn’t have such opportunities in Prague. We originally planned to produce the film in Prague, but, after winning the pitching event, we were able to extend production and afford shots that we would never have made before.

Larger, airier… As the theme is also about flying, it came in handy.

I was on an Erasmus internship in Estonia in the Nukufilm studio, which is an old and traditional studio. Estonia is also very well-known for its drawn and puppet animation, in effect, it is an animation superpower. I worked there as an assistant, I helped with the production of props and scenes. I remember that I wandered around the studio, asked a lot of questions and took notes.

Why did you choose puppet animation if it’s so demanding in terms of money and time and nowadays young animators would rather opt for more modern techniques?

On the one hand, I like the fact that it is made manually and everything that you see in the film really exists, you can hold it in your hands, see what materials were used. However, I don’t know whether that was the real reason why I started with it in the past. When I was young, I attended a primary art school where we tested various techniques and that is where I made my first puppet, which I produced and moved.

I simply like to create things. One of my first records in our family book of children’s statements is that I want a file, drill, chisel and a jaw-vice for my birthday. When I was about seven years old, I made small figures – an army – and then I made pictures of them, gave them motion, then made pictures again, moved them… I had no idea it is called animation and absolutely no idea that it is puppet animation and that I would earn my living by it several years later.

You’ve already said how you came up with the concept but how do you proceed when writing the script?

I prepared the script for both my fi lms with Ivana Sujová. While writing the script for Rosso Papavero we met and consulted frequently; she had great ideas from the circus environment – an old circus artiste whose bones are creaking, a fat woman juggling in a wheelchair, these are all her ideas. The entire development of The Kite took a very long time, so she collaborated with me in several phases. We skyped, we met, but the version that was made I wrote alone. Pitching consultations helped me very much from the dramaturgic point of view. When I was at Anifilm in Třeboň, I held consultations with Philip LaZebnik, a DreamWorks screenwriter who, for instance, wrote Mulan, Pocahontas, The Prince of Egypt. He told me to chuck the entire retrospective sequence that I still had there at that time and to transform it into as simple a model as possible.

To be able to express it in a single sentence: The older grandpa is, the thinner he is, and when he is the thinnest, a light wind blows him away. LaZebnik helped me to a great extent but that was immediately before I was to present the film at the Animarkt. So, in a very short time I had to prepare a new script. And in the end, I won in Lodz.

So, these pitchings meant a big milestone for you in various stages of the film’s development. In your view, what was their greatest contribution?

The fact that I had to present the project, prepare it, formulate it for myself, clean it. Even preparation of the presentation itself moves the project as such forward.

But, in the main, it’s a very unpleasant process.

If there’s something I really can’t stand, it’s pitching, because it’s difficult to stand up in front of an audience and to present something you are convinced doesn’t work. But at the same time, you have to realise that those people are used to it. I think that the pitchings mostly helped me in the development of the film as there are people present who have been working as dramaturges for years and are able to very quickly identify what works and what does not.

All that you say leads to the conclusion that, as far as animated films are concerned, the development phase is extremely important for the preparation of the production itself. How did the development of The Kite proceed and what do you think about the criticism of its long duration? Is there anything like a “too long” development phase?

Truth be told, I wouldn’t wish to develop a fi lm over as long a time as I did this one. You know, a filmmaker doesn’t want to start making the film if he or she feels that the story doesn’t work. He or she tries to change things, simplify them, write various versions, prepare storyboards. However, sometimes it’s good to be at least under some constraint. For instance, when we won at the Animarkt we were given precise deadlines as to when we could make the film and we couldn’t do anything about it. It was five weeks and we had to kick off at a completely different pace.

Are you working on any other concepts and ideas?

Will it be a puppet film again?

I’ve been preparing a concept for about three years now in my spare time. However, I’ve set myself some limits – that I’ll only work on it when I’m travelling. I travelled a lot last year, so I worked on it a fair amount. The concept is based on the animation of everyday objects combined with drawn animation which results in totally different objects. I realised that I like films in which the technique is not just self-serving, but is based on the script, and if another technique were to be used it couldn’t work. For example, Rabbit and Deer (Nyuszi és őz, dir. Péter Vácz) is such a film. ◀

new films

28 — 29

— text: Zuzana Sotáková —

More Films and the Return of Established Filmmakers

In 2019, experienced directors will return to the screens of Slovak cinemas with their new films, but newcomers will also introduce themselves. Accordingly, a varied collection of genres and creative approaches awaits the audiences. Compared with the previous year, more feature and documentary films should be presented in cinemas.

Right at the beginning of the year, director Peter Bebjak, who received an award last year at the Karlovy Vary IFF for his film The Line (Čiara), presented his new film The Rift (Trhlina). The Rift is a mystery thriller based on the bestseller by Slovak writer Jozef Karika and it has been made into a full-length feature film and TV mini-series.

By a Sharp Knife (Ostrým nožom) is one of the most eagerly awaited titles in the first half of the year.

The film, made by the débuting director Teodor Kuhn, treats the personal tragedy of a single family, but through this tragedy he also expediently illustrates the overall situation of Slovak society and highlights its weak points. The story was inspired by a true event – the murder of university student Daniel Tupý. “We wanted to make an archetypal story about injustice in order to make audiences realise that there really are people in Slovakia whom the state mistreats,” said Kuhn for Film.sk during the shooting of By a Sharp Knife.

In March, a documentary about the desire and option to choose a dignified end to life will receive its Slovak première. The Good Death (Dobrá smrť) by director Tomáš Krupa follows Janette who is terminally ill.

Under British law, she is not permitted to choose euthanasia, so she makes her final journey to Switzerland.

However, on this journey she has to explain her decision to her family and close friends. The feature-length documentary Batastories has its première planned for spring; it was made by the director (66 Seasons/66 sezón, Cooking History/Ako sa varia dejiny) and producer, Peter Kerekes, who has had a number of successes at festivals. His new film maps out the significant milestones and mistakes made over the course of building the Baťa empire. The Czech-Slovak adaptation of Simon Mawer’s novel The Glass Room (Sklenená izba) will also

be presented in cinemas in the first half of the year.

The film was made by director Julius Ševčík and the story captures the lives of several people against the backdrop of the dynamic events of the 20th century.

A famous architectural landmark connects them – the Villa Tugendhat in Brno. The Glass Room has an international cast – Carice van Houten, Claes Bang, Hanna Alstrom, Karel Roden – and also the Slovak actress, Alexandra Borbély, laureate of the European Film Award for Best Actress for the leading role in the Hungarian film On Body and Soul (O tele a duši).

In 2019, the second feature project by Marko Škop, who was originally a documentary filmmaker, will also be presented in cinemas. The director, who has previously received several awards, based his new film Let There Be Light (Nech je svetlo) on the relationship between a father and son. Forty-year-old Milan is the family’s breadwinner; however, he works abroad and during his absence his eldest son becomes involved in the bullying and death of a classmate. “The story focuses on a family with a major problem that they have to come to terms with. The theme of nationalism or extremist youth groups is secondary; it constitutes another layer. In essence, it is a psychological drama about family failures, trials and tribulations,” explained Marko Škop for Film.sk. He made his feature film début with Eva Nová which won an award at the Toronto IFF. Škop’s peer, Ivan Ostrochovský, who attracted attention in particular with his film Koza will offer a new film to audiences, The Disciple (Posol) – the story of 20-year-old Michal who enrols in a Roman-Catholic Seminary to escape the moral devastation of society caused by the normalisation. However, the initial excitement wears off as he discovers that the clerics also display signs of moral decay. Director Jonáš Karásek

also returns to the past, but the story of his film Amnesty (Amnestie) dates from a different period, when communism was falling apart, and major social-political changes occurred after 1989. The fates of the individual characters are intertwined and linked by Havel’s amnesty and the violent events in the Leopoldov prison which followed afterwards.

After My Dog Killer (Môj pes Killer), which won the Hivos Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Mira Fornay will come with her new film Cook, Fuck, Kill (Žaby bez jazyka). It is the story of one day in the life of Jaroslav K. who works as a hospital attendant. He is an apparently good-natured man and husband who, in fact, is obsessed with sex and terrorises his wife.

Another well-known Slovak director, Jaro Vojtek, will present in cinemas his documentary 7 Days (7 dní). Through the examples of a truck driver, a care-worker and a group of manual labourers, the fi lm shows the lives of people who have to travel for work on so-called weekly tours. In addition, Vojtek will present his documentary Earthly Paradise (Raj na zemi) which focuses on the reporter, Andrej Bán, and, at the same time, will reflect problem areas and phenomena in the world and Slovakia. Th is year promises to be particularly rich in documentaries. In addition to those already mentioned, the observational documentary Silent Days (Kašuke ďivesa [Hluché dni]) by Pavol Pekarčík, which captures the fates of hearing-impaired children living on the periphery of society, will be presented in cinemas. In turn, Erik Praus will offer a documentary essay from the lives of monks in the Ukrainian monastery, the Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra, Turn (Premenenie). Director Vladislava Sárkány is preparing the documentary comedy A LITT LE BIT UTOPIC or being a human (Ta monarchia) about the efforts of man to make his country better, whereby

the leitmotif becomes a parable of a perfect bee community. Viera Čákanyová made the essay FREM as a requiem for the vanishing species of Homo sapiens.

And this is only just a short selection from the list of new documentary films planned.

Further feature films are also quite varied. Summer with Bernard (Leto s Bernardom) by débuting director Martina Saková is a family film. Richard and Viťo Staviarsky opt for a colourful tragi-comedy from the environment of funfairs, Loli Paradicka (Loli paradička).

The drama Punk Never Ends! (Punk je hned!) by Juraj Šlauka will take audiences into the world of punks living on the periphery. And the adaptation of the world bestseller The Painted Bird (Pomaľované vtáča) made by director Václav Marhoul in a minority co-production with Slovakia is one of the anticipated fi lms. It has a star cast: Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel, Nina Šunevič, Stellan Skarsgård and Julian Sands.

This year we commemorate the centenary of the death of the significant Slovak politician, diplomat, pilot and astronomer, Milan Rastislav Štefánik and filmmakers also respond to this fact. Not just a feature film (General/Generál, dir. Jérôme Cornuau), but also an animated film will be devoted to this personality – in May, The Impossible Voyage (Cesta do nemožna, dir.

Noro Držiak) will receive its première; with a certain exaggeration the makers of this film characterised it as a documentary made by Georges Méliès.

Also, one of the most reputable directors of Slovak cinema, Juraj Jakubisko, has returned to filmmaking after making Bathory (Bathory, 2008). More than three decades since his success with the magical fairy tale Lady Winter (Perinbaba), he is preparing a sequel expec2019 ted to be presented in cinemas at the end of 2019. ◀ 1 — Let there be light / photo: ARTILERIA — 2 — The Disciple / photo: Punkchart fi lms —

topic

30 — 31

— text: Zuzana Sotáková —

Slovak Film Commission

The Slovak Film Commission was established in June last year and Zuzana Bieliková was appointed as its manager. It works as an organisational unit of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund and it aims to contribute to making Slovakia a more attractive partner for foreign film productions and domestic investors.

The main tasks of the Slovak Film Commission include the promotion of Slovakia as a competitive film country, the presentation and mediation of creative, business and entrepreneurial opportunities for Slovak professionals working in audiovisual culture and industry, the presentation of related services and individual regions of Slovakia, and also enhancing demand for the providers of film production services.

Since its establishment, the Commission has managed to present itself at Karlovy Vary IFF, at AFCI Cineposium in Los Angeles, at the Focus market in London and at the When East Meets West film market in Trieste. It has become a member of the AFCI (Association of Film Commissioners International) and EUFCN (European Film Commissions Network).

The concept Zuzana Bieliková devised for the Slovak Film Commission was consulted with foreign experts, but she also made use of the experience of local professionals. The creation of the Commission’s visual identity and branding was one of the first steps taken. In addition to the logo, the website and promotional materials which enable them to better present the Commission at foreign events, an important database of locations and a production database were also created. “That serves as stepping stone in communication with all those who are interested in making films in Slovakia. At the same time, during the short existence of the Slovak Film Commission, we have joined the Green Screen project which focuses on the sustainability and greening of the film industry. As part of this project, we try to raise awareness of the possibilities that can be used not only on film sets but can also be implemented within the operation of cinemas or the recycling of film decorations and costumes,” explains Bieliková and emphasises that in the initial phase their priorities are the preparation of attractive and original promotional materials and active communication via social networks. “One of our priorities is also to make the regional representatives aware of the functioning of the Slovak Film Commission and to have them realise that our Commission can help them to communicate

with filmmakers and, the other way round, to make filmmakers realise that we can help them to negotiate better conditions for making films in the long run.”

The Slovak Film Commission performs activities directed at other countries but also within Slovakia.

“In Slovakia we were waiting for the results of the municipal elections and we plan to meet the representatives of municipal and regional authorities shortly. We want to open a discussion with them about a simplification of the issuing of the shooting permits and to work out possible types of collaboration within an environmentally sustainable filmmaking.

We have started to organise a series of lectures about sustainable filmmaking for the Slovak filmmaking community and to collaborate closely with the representatives of national parks and historical buildings that are attractive not just for foreign productions, but also for domestic filmmakers,” says the Commission’s manager. As for foreign countries, they mainly try to communicate adequate and realistic information as to what the Slovak film industry is able to offer. “And also, how to prepare the filmmaking as efficiently as possible so as to be able to carry out ever more challenging film projects in Slovakia, or to offer alternatives from the neighbouring countries such as providing resources (particularly film studios) lacking in Slovakia,” continues Zuzana Bieliková.

Merging the activities of the Slovak Film Commission and the Slovak Film Institute, which also promotes our country at festivals and markets, is also related to activities focused on foreign countries. “We set up a strategic plan as to which events we are going to collaborate in. In particular, the EFM film market in Berlin, Marche du film in Cannes where we are going to have a joint stand and organise joint events. In addition to film markets, we are also going to collaborate in the presentation of Slovakia at the Karlovy Vary IFF.” In October last year the Slovak Film Commission hired Eva Pospíšilová who is mainly in charge of the Green Screen project and communication on social networks.

The Commission website is www.filmcommission.sk. ◀

topic

— text: Jaroslava Jelchová —

Presentation of Slovak Films Abroad The presentation of films from the archive collections of the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) at home and abroad constitutes part of the work associated with them. The SFI’s National Cinematographic Centre (NCC) manages this presentation in collaboration with the SFI’s National Film Archive. Last year, they succeeded in getting a number of interesting titles from the history of Slovak cinema into the programmes of prestigious festivals.

Six films from the SFI’s archive collections were presented at the prestigious 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (3 – 8 May 2018): Water and Work (Voda a práca, dir. Martin Slivka, 1963), Old Shatterhand Came to See Us (Prišiel k nám Old Shatterhand, dir. Dušan Hanák, 1966), Photographing the House Dwellers (Fotografovanie obyvateľov domu, dir. Dušan Trančík, 1968), Eye (Oko, dir. Juraj Bindzár, 1968), Lilli Marlen (Lilli Marlen, dir. Peter Mihálik, 1970) and The Red Cross Drummer (Bubeník Červeného kríža, dir. Juraj Jakubisko, 1977).

“This selection of films traces the most prominent experimental tendencies in Slovak short film, mostly from the “Golden Era” of the 1960s when political interference and bureaucratic control of filmmaking in the nationalised film industry were weakened,” clarified Martin Kaňuch from the SFI who collated the above collection. “For the first time since the post-war restart of Slovak cinema in 1945, it was predominantly the young generation of filmmakers who began to exhibit certain experimental tendencies – they can mainly be seen in the works by Dušan Hanák, Juraj Jakubisko and Dušan Trančík. However, filmmakers of the older generation (documentary filmmakers Vlado Kubenko and Martin Slivka) also began seeking out different ways of working with cinematic images, music or sound, and started to discover new ways to avoid representation, narration (refusing to use voiceovers) and illustration.”

At last year’s Karlovy Vary IFF (29 June – 7 July 2018), in addition to new Slovak films, a work from the golden fund of Slovak cinema was also presented – Signum Laudis (1980). In it, director Martin Hollý returned to the times of World War 1 to highlight the absurd implications of the power machinery in the middle of a big armed conflict. The Karlovy Vary Festival presented this film previously when it was made and awarded it with the Jury Special Mention. This time it was presented in a digitally restored version in the Out of the Past section.

The leading representative of Slovak animation, Viktor Kubal, was commemorated at the 51st Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia (4 – 14

October 2018) in Spain. Kubal’s fi lm The Bloody Lady (Krvavá pani, 1980), playing with the grim myth about Countess Báthory, and six short films were shown in a retrospective section: Earth (Zem), Tom Thumb at a Magician's Place (Janko Hraško u kúzelníka), The Cinema (Kino), Look What Happened to Johnny on the Road (Čo sa stalo Janíkovi na ceste), The Meteorologist (Meteorológ) and The Idol (Idol). The director of the SFI’s NCC, Rastislav Steranka, presented them at the festival. The same applies to another important Slovak film The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos, dir. Peter Solan, 1964) which was screened at the 10th Lumière Festival – International Classic Film Festival (13 – 21 October 2018) in Lyon, France. An ironic parable about how an incompetent nonentity seized power, takes place in interesting sets in artistic terms and one of the most reputable classic fi lm festivals included it in the Archival Treasures and Curiosities section. It was screened in the digitally restored version. Later in the year, Solan’s work was also included in the programme of the Estonian Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (16 November – 2 December 2018).

Foreign audiences also got a chance to learn about the dramatic events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia via films from the SFI’s archive collections. For instance, Commemoration (Tryzna, dir. Vlado Kubenko, Peter Mihálik, Dušan Trančík, 1969), capturing the vigil for Jan Palach who set himself on fire as a protest against the military occupation of Czechoslovakia and social conformism, was presented at the prestigious DOK Leipzig Festival in Germany. As we commemorated half a century since the above events of 1968 last year, The Wake was also screened at other events abroad and on this occasion other films were presented: Black Days (Čierne dni, dir. Ladislav Kudelka, Milan Černák, Štefan Kamenický, Ctibor Kováč, 1968) or The Time We Are Living (Čas, ktorý žijeme, dir. Vlado Kubenko, Ladislav Kudelka, Jaroslav Pogran, Otakar Krivánek, Ivan Húšťava, 1968). ◀

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Success Comes from Collaboration

— text: Michal Michalovič — photo: Miro Nôta —

Rastislav Steranka has been Director of the National Cinematographic Centre (NCC) as an organisational unit of the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) since 2017. This Centre is tasked, inter alia, with the promotion of contemporary Slovak films and the Slovak audiovisual heritage at home and abroad.

What are the priorities of the NCC’s activities?

The “promotion of audiovision including the audiovisual heritage” is one of the main activities enjoined on the SFI under the law. That is where our priorities are. However, we would like to focus more closely on the presentation of Slovak short films. In particular, in our country students make short films as their Bachelor’s and Master’s films. There are few, if any, independent directors and producers who would choose to focus specifically on short film production. I have the impression that in our country short film is regarded as a sort of intermediate step between studying at a film school and a professional career. But abroad it is usually deemed to be a distinct, independent type of film production. So we will try to return its face to Slovak short film. For instance, the international success of the student film by Michal Blaško Atlantis, 2003 (Atlantída, 2003) was the inspiration; in 2017, it was included in the Cinéfondation competition section at the Cannes Film Festival and it was also presented at other festivals. It is important that students keen on film should not have to end up in advertising agencies or commercial TV: it is difficult to get back from there, especially to a place where you have to fight for something on a daily basis. It is a conceptual and strategic matter for us; we are talking about the three to five years, maybe, that are required to make people at home and abroad more aware of Slovak short film. Another point is that students should not have the feeling that this production is exclusively linked to their school and, at the same time, they should not hold unrealistic expectations and expect to leap straight into a full-length project right away. Of course, the natural filmmaking development drives towards making full-length films, but it would be a shame if academy graduates made decisions on the principle that they will either make full-length films or nothing.

What is the ratio of NCC activities in relation to contemporary film production and films that the SFI holds rights to? How do you curate films from the SFI’s archive collections at all?

In the first half of the year our entire department is virtually overburdened with preparations for the presentation of contemporary Slovak film, since we are wholly in charge of the presentation of Slovak cinema at festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Karlovy Vary.

Of course, the presentation of classic films is part and parcel of the work of our department and, at the same time, it is also my personal priority. As for digitally restored films, we collaborate for instance with embassies which (co)organise various smaller film presentations and retrospectives. We also try to initiate collaborations with prestigious festivals of classic films, such as the Lumière Festival in Lyon. Last year, the digitally restored version of Solan’s film The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos) received its world première there in the Archival Treasures and Curiosities section, the previous year it was the digitally restored version of the full-length animated film by Viktor Kubal The Bloody Lady (Krvavá pani). On the basis of this, we received several requests from other festivals and cinemathéques. Ideally, there will be a snowball effect. Naturally, we work with what we’ve got and what we are able to prepare in collaboration with the SFI’s National Film Archive (NFA) by the deadlines for submitting applications to the individual

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festivals. It is important to have digitised films with the required language support available. In 2017, we presented the digitised version of Karol Plicka’s film The Land Sings (Zem spieva) in collaboration with the international music festival, Viva Musica!, with a live accompaniment from the Orchestra and Choir of Viva Musica!. It was an electrifying audiovisual experience.

I would also like to mention the first issue of Slovak film on BDs on the English market. It was The Miraculous Virgin that was issued last year by the UK-based company Second Run. The film has been digitally restored and there are interesting bonus materials on the BDs. Last year a presentation of Slovak short films, primarily from the 1960s, was held at the Oberhausen Festival. And we could mention other events.

You talk about the NCC successes within the presentation of Slovak films. Is there, by way of contrast, a regret on your part about something that didn’t work out?

I wouldn’t talk about the success of the NCC, rather about the success of our institution as a whole.

The NCC could not function without direct collaboration and coordination of work with the NFA and the digitisation workplace. Actually, we are at the tip of the iceberg and we would have nothing to offer in the area of making the audiovisual heritage visible without the work of skilled people in the digitisation workplace.

The promotion of contemporary films is, by a long way, not just about our department either, it is primarily due to the success of the independent producers who make these films. We try to support each other with activities that are complementary and need to have a synergic effect in order to work.

Who are NCC’s foreign partners and what is NCC’s position among them?

Our foreign partners are film centres, in particular. They constitute a part of the film institutes, archives and funds having the presentation of contemporary national cinema as their main activity. We are a rather specific case. Film centres – for instance in the Czech Republic or Poland – come under the support funds in audiovision (the Czech Film Fund in the Czech Republic and the Polish Film Institute in Poland), while we are under the SFI, which is not a fund but an archive.

These film centres are associated within the European Film Promotion (EFP). As their representatives, we meet in the EFP twice a year and we bring together our reservoirs of knowledge and experience along with our own audiovisual environment. A synergic effect ensues – the EFP promotes European cinema as a whole.

It actually acts as a kind of umbrella covering the activities of the individual centres. What some countries could not afford to do on their own (for example secure their presence at film markets in Hongkong or the US), they can do under the EFP. And the position of the SFI’s NCC among these institutions? We are their equal partner. Countries with a large audiovisual “capacity” (such as France, the United Kingdom, Italy) and small-

er countries come together in the EFP; nevertheless, the relationships there are equal and friendly. If something is to be decided jointly and there is a difference of opinions, it is not only the view of a country which produces 200 films a year but also that of a country which produces 20 which is taken into consideration.

What challenges are ahead of you and your team in the near future?

The volume of work is huge. As I’ve said, one of the challenges is to return artistic autonomy and prestige to short films, but also to foster the trust of young filmmakers in short films. Another challenge is to push documentary film more prominently to the fore again.

It would be ideal if documentary, feature and short films all had the same visibility at home and abroad. Making the Slovak audiovisual heritage visible in the local environment is also a big challenge. The older generation knows these films, they are broadcast on TV, but the younger generation is not interested in television.

Let us go back to 2017 when Slovak films had a record attendance in our country. This also holds true for The Line by director Peter Bebjak, but it was a film that was successful not only with the domestic audiences but also at festivals. What do you think about it, was it just some sort of anomaly?

The Line (Čiara) is more of a very pleasant exceptional phenomenon. If we do not have the “hardest” line of arthouse film in mind, then at festivals we often see films that could be designated as “arthouse films with a mainstream audience potential”. It sounds like a joke but there is some truth in it. From my point of view, these are films that deal with serious themes or films that are based on social drama but, at the same time, use the procedures applied in genre cinematography. If the director is able to keep it under control and does it skilfully, such a film can work because a spectator with a refined taste tuned to more demanding artistic films and also an ordinary spectator who will follow and be led by the line of the genre will both find what they are looking for in it. The Line does a marvellous job of balancing on the cusp between arthouse and commercial film.

We try to help contemporary Slovak films, we consult festival strategies with their producers but, ultimately, it is the representatives of the festivals themselves who choose the films for festivals. If the film is selected, then a further task lies ahead for us – to promote it well at the festival. And if the film wins a prize, it leads to further and further journeys for the fi lm.

It is a positive snowball effect. However, we believe that we also need to support the presentation of Slovak cinema at home, in Slovakia. ◀

interview

— text: Martin Kaňuch — photo: Miro Nôta —

In the

Film Archive Labyrinth The Slovak Film Institute (SFI) comprises two basic organisational units, one being the National Film Archive (NFA) for the protection and restoration of the audiovisual heritage. Marián Hausner has been its director since 2016. In the interview, he specifies the activities the NFA deals with in the context of the Slovak Film Institute.

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What is the current position of the National Film Archive within the SFI and what activities does it perform?

First of all, I would like to state that the Slovak Film Institute is primarily based on the concept of a film archive. It is also the statutory depository predominantly for Slovak audiovisual works for cinemas and documents accompanying them. The National Film Archive is the SFI’s largest organisational unit; however, its activities cannot be wholly separated from all the other processes performed in the SFI. If I were to greatly simplify it, I could say that these are mainly activities related to the collections and fonds, or in other ways to film heritage, but also information and knowledge about it. And if, in turn, I were to generalise it as much as possible, it is important to understand the film archive as a network and its activities could be characterised by concepts such as event, map, repeatability, connection, amplification.

You could clarify that generalisation…

Film and cinema are perceived as an event in film archives. It is, for instance, important for the ac-

matter of fact, only those cinematographic works that have undergone the photochemical process in film laboratories can enter the digitisation process. Hence, we only digitise those works that we were able to treat on their original media. In turn, connection is crucial for making works accessible, whatever angle we approach it from; in particular, it is the connection of the film with its audiences at presentations in the cinema as, for instance, in Cinema Lumière’s Filmotheque in Bratislava, where cinematographic works can still be viewed on 35 mm copies from the collections of the National Film Archive. And we can add an amplification to that, which is perhaps a better concept than interpretation or contextualisation, and here I would like to refer mainly to scientific-research activities, whether historical, theoretical, aesthetical or film-archive ones.

These activities are supported by projects with a prevailing systematic approach as I anticipate. Could you list the most significant ones?

It is really important to choose a systematic but also process approach in the projects. The projects

All in all, work in a film archive is highly interdisciplinary: there is film art at one end and chemistry at the other, while the information-communication technologies link it all up.

quisition or creation of collections. That means that it is vital not only to acquire the cinematographic works and the media bearing them but also the documents accompanying them covering their entire life-cycle from their preparation, through production, distribution to their reflection and archiving. So these include not just the source, reproduction and distribution media of cinematographic works, but also film scripts, production documents, posters, photographs, reviews in periodicals, monographs and similar. Last but not least, it can also be the original cardboard box bearing a ministerial stamp indicating that this or that film was banned in the past. In order to be able to find one’s bearings in the film archive labyrinth, the creation of a map is key, which is generally done as part of the filmographic and cataloguing activities. In the preservation, conservation, and restoration processes, a belief in repeatability is, inter alia, important for the film archive; this ensues not just from the nature of film media, but also the current digital media. Restoring them means extending their life, but it doesn’t mean that we reject or exclude their original media. As a

implemented by the National Film Archive staff are, fortunately, long-term, functionally interlinked and each focuses on a certain part of the process of preservation and rendering accessible the audiovisual heritage of the Slovak Republic. It is excellent that the Slovak Film Institute obtains financial support for the implementation of these projects, hence the work of colleagues from the SFI’s Economics and Management Section is also important. For instance, on the part of the founder, i.e. the Ministry of Culture, the support afforded to the SK CINEMA Information System Project implemented since 2002 is important. The Systematic Restoration of the Audiovisual Heritage of the Slovak Republic is another extraordinarily important long-term project.

It began in 2004 and the Slovak Government has provided ongoing support since 2006. The national Digital Audiovision project, carried out in 2011 to 2015, should also be added to the above projects; it was co-funded from the European Regional Development Fund. In 2016, this digitisation project entered into the sustainability phase.

In general, film archives do not boast much about the treasures they acquired a long time ago in different ways. Could you name any?

The answer will probably be surprising as, in my view, these are primarily people, all my wonderful and fantastic colleagues. Even those who are no longer present with us. They are seekers, carers, protectors and navigators, all at the same time.

What kind of people does the Film Archive need nowadays?

Work in the film archive, which includes a public library, a mediatheque, a traditional archive, a cinema, as well as many film and digital technologies, has to rely on a variety of professions. If I wanted to summarise it, these are film historians, film archivists, film curators, film restorers/conservators, librarians and archivists, even though the positions aren’t perhaps formally entitled like that. And all of them are specialised in some way – for instance, in filmographic activities or digital preservation. However, two steadily vanishing professions, those working with physical film artefacts, may be regarded as crucial. One of these is the film projectionists who bring the film experience to life for audiences. The second is the film lab technicians, although, unfortunately, film labs do not form a part of our institution, so we collaborate with external ones. But I really respect our colleagues who formerly worked in film labs and now perform professional technical control and basic preservation activities with film artefacts. All in all, work in a film archive is highly interdisciplinary: there is film art at one end and chemistry at the other, while the information-communication technologies link it all up. This dispersion is very big, however, as in Slovakia there is no formal education in the area of audiovisual archives if we wanted to extend the domain to include film archiving.

Discovering what has been lost and recalling what has been forgotten is most interesting in the work of every memory institution. I regard detective searches, for instance for copies of Slovak films, to be the most interesting in our institution… Have you managed to extend the collections by something of interest since you’ve been Director of the NFA? In 2017, we were enormously delighted when we acquired what is probably the most complete copy of the exceptional film The Land Sings (Zem spieva) by director Karol Plicka in the form of an exchange with the American Library of Congress, specifically with its National Audio-visual Conservation Center. The original negative of this film dating from 1933 was lost in a fire in Zlín in 1944. The preserved positive copy was incomplete and in 1939 the film’s Prague prologue was replaced with shots of Bratislava. In particular, Martin Slivka and Juraj Lexmann were entrusted with reconstruction of this film in 1983; for instance, they restored the original shots of Prague to the film and

they provided it with a new music soundtrack; nevertheless, it was still incomplete. Some fifteen years ago my colleague Miro Ulman came up with substantial information about screenings of The Land Sings in the United States. A nitrate copy was located there in a garage sale, whence it got into the American Film Institute and from there to the Library of Congress for preservation; in 2002, duplicate negatives of the image and sound were prepared there and, in 2003, new film copies. Later, while preparing the History of Slovak Cinema 1896 – 1969 (Dejiny slovenskej kinematografie 1896 – 1969), the authors of the publication managed to obtain a digital preview copy on their own initiative; on the basis of this the music component of the film was compared with the original score manuscript so it was anticipated that this could be the complete film.

Subsequently, we communicated with our colleagues across the ocean via e-mails, which was rather tedious.

It is always best when people can see each other so when our colleague Peter Csordás took part in the congress of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in Los Angeles, he also met Mike Mashon from the Library of Congress and he managed to reach an agreement that they would provide us with the version of The Land Sings found in America. We exchanged it for the film copy of another exceptional work – Pictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta) so this will also be preserved in the Library of Congress.

I am happy that, not simply in compliance with the statutory obligations, the SFI’s National Film Archive is growing and adding new Slovak films and accompanying documents, and currently all of that mainly in digital form. That is also thanks to the fact that filmmakers and also other people who are in some way linked to film, for example film historians, their relatives or artists, resort to us even of their own accord and are ready to donate to us either their entire personal archives or parts thereof, such as photographs, manuscripts, scripts but also film technology or their works on film media. I really appreciate this expression of trust and it creates a commitment on our part to preserve these artefacts so as to be of use also for future generations. ◀

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38 — 39

— text: Jaroslava Jelchová —

Film and Book Impulses from the SFI The Editorial Department of the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) has plans to issue films from the SFI’s archive collections on digital media this year also. Several new books are also planned and, moreover, the Editorial Department regularly issues the filmological magazine Kino-Ikon and the monthly Film.sk.

Recently, a representative selection of works by the doyen of Slovak animation, Viktor Kubal, was issued on DVD and BD. This year, the SFI is preparing another DVD title devoted to Slovak animated film, specifically to the works of the director Helena Slavíková-Rabarová.

Her series Pictures-Folksongs (Maľovanky-spievanky) maps out Slovak folk customs, songs, nursery rhymes, singsongs and various fine-art artefacts of a folkloric nature and presents them to the child audience in the form of puppet stories. The individual parts are titled based on seasons: Early Spring (Predjarie, 1982), Spring (Jar, 1983), Summer (Leto, 1987), Autumn (Jeseň, 1988), Winter (Zima, 1990). In addition to Svetozár Stračina’s music, they are also unified by the art design of Hana Cigánová.

This year, the SFI should issue on DVD and BD Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’s memorable film The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze, 1965). The strong ethical message, exceptional acting performances (Jozef Kroner and Ida Kamińska in the leading roles) and high-quality artistic rendition of the story taking place during the war in the Slovak State won the film an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category; it was the first Czechoslovak film in history to win an Academy Award.

As for DVD production, the SFI is also issuing some short documentaries; let us just mention the selection of newsreels Week in Film 1945 – 1990 (Týždeň vo filme 1945 – 1990). These are the news or publicist news reports which for decades were screened in cinemas prior to the main film. At present, a 2-DVD Slovak Documentary Film: the 1960s (Slovenský dokumentárny film: Šesťdesiate roky) is in preparation. It should contain films such as Water and Work (Voda a práca, dir.

Martin Slivka, 1963), Old Shatterhand Came to See Us (Prišiel k nám Old Shatterhand, dir. Dušan Hanák, 1966), Photographing the House Dwellers (Fotografovanie obyvateľov domu, dir. Dušan Trančík, 1968), Lilli Marlen (Lilli Marlen, dir. Peter Mihálik, 1970), but also other films by authors such as Ladislav Kudelka, Štefan Kamenický, Jaroslav Pogran, Vlado Kubenko, Ivan Húšťava, Jozef Zachar, Karol Skřipský, Otakar Krivánek and others.

The SFI is also planning to issue three popular comedies by Slovak director Ján Lacko: Luck Will Come on Sunday (Šťastie pride v nedeľu, 1958), Soccer Fans (Skalní v ofsajde, 1960) and A Trip Down the Danube (Výlet po Dunaji, 1962). In this case it will be a DVD collection.

The SFI plans to issue on DVD and BD Elo Havetta’s Celebration in the Botanical Garden (Slávnosť v botanickej záhrade, 1969) and Wild Lilies (Ľalie poľné, 1972).

The first is Havetta’s full-length début which brings a celebration of freedom and life in crazy images filled with spontaneous energy to the traumatic period after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces. Dodo Šimončič was the director of photography in this film, as in Havetta’s second full-length film Wild Lilies which is sometimes also said to be the last film of the Slovak New Wave. At the same time, it is also the last film made by the director, who died prematurely at the age of 36. Despite his early death, he remains one of the most original of Slovak filmmakers. Incidentally, last year the SFI also issued on DVD films made by two other directors from Havetta’s generation: Dušan Hanák (Silent Joy/Tichá radosť, Private Lives/Súkromné životy) and Juraj Jakubisko (Infidelity in a Slovak Way/Nevera po slovensky). While talking about the most distinctive personalities of Slovak cinema, we should also mention the issue of director Peter Solan’s film The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos) on DVD and BD. As regards publications, this year the SFI plans to issue a compendium of writings about the doyen of Slovak film criticism and journalism, Pavel Branko.

Next planned is a monograph about film historian, researcher and pioneer of film archiving in Slovakia, Ivan Rumanovský, prepared by Marián Pauer. A second, extended issue awaits Our Film Century (Naše filmové storočie) by František Gyárfáš and Juraj Malíček. This is a selection of the favourite films of the authors covering the entire history of film, world and domestic cinematography, art production and popular genres.

The information that the SFI has already prepared the second issue of Best of Slovak Film 1921 – 1991 by Peter Hames may well be of interest to foreign readers. ◀

profi le

— text: Daniel Bernát — photo: archive of the SFI / Margita Skoumalová —

PETER SOLAN He is the director of films belonging to the golden age of Slovak cinema. What a shame that during communism the authorities undermined him, and he was unable to work in the way his talent merited.

This year, filmmaker Peter Solan (1929 – 2013) would have been ninety years old.

Solan studied directing at FAMU in Prague and he began his professional career in the Documentary Film Studio in Bratislava in the 1950s. He made his début in full-length feature films with the satire The Devil Never Sleeps (Čert nespí) which he made together with František Žáček. He directed his next feature film on his own; it was the very first Slovak detective film – The Man Who Never Returned (Muž, ktorý sa nevrátil, 1959). For his period (and socialist Czechoslovakia) Solan held progressive, frequently even courageous, ideas and ambitions.

Unfortunately, some of them he was not permitted to realise, while others he could only carry out after some years. One of them is the film drama from the concentration camp environment The Boxer and Death (Boxer a smrť, 1962) which has quite an unusual story: the camp commandant chooses one of the prisoners as his sparring partner for boxing contests, he starts providing him with advantages and the prisoner goes along with this “game” but he cannot rid himself of his feeling of solidarity with the other prisoners in the camp. The film received a number of awards, for instance at the San Francisco IFF. Another film, which should have been made earlier, was the acrimonious The Barnabáš Kos Case (Prípad Barnabáš Kos, 1964) which was recently issued by the Slovak Film Institute on DVD and BD. In this case, Solan played out an absurd charade in which an inconspicuous well-disposed nonentity (a triangle player) unexpectedly comes into power (he becomes director of the orchestra) which gradually consumes him,

and he starts to abuse it. Solan’s next film Before Tonight Is Over (Kým sa skončí táto noc, 1965), also planned earlier, was outstanding not just for the remarkable extent of acting improvisation but also for the attractive visual solution of the interior of the bar in which the entire story is set. By the way, interesting artistic scenic solutions also characterise the The Barnabáš Kos Case referred to above. In the 1960s the director himself stated that he would rather attack in art and try out new things, running the risk of making mistakes, than be infallible in artistic impotence. “Peter Solan brought a European dimension to the provincial Slovak film – an intelligent sense of perspective, wit and self-irony, authenticity and civility, respect for the truth of life,” said screenwriter and dramaturge Dagmar Ditrichová about the director for Film.sk.

In the early 1970s, for political reasons Solan was transferred to the Short Film Studio where he made documentaries; only at the end of the decade did he return to feature projects. In addition to the above films, let us refer to some other films he made, such as A Face in the Window (Tvár v okne, 1963), Dialogues 20 40 60 (Dialóg 20 40 60, 1968, an omnibus film – with the directors Jerzy Skolimowski and Zbyněk Brynych), A Small Opinion Survey (Malá anketa, 1968, TV), … and Be Good (… a sekať dobrotu, 1968, short), The Famous Dog (Slávny pes, 1971, mid-length TV film), And I’ll Run to the Ends of the Earth (A pobežím až na kraj sveta, 1979), Anticipation (Tušenie, 1982). ◀

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— text: Jakub Lenčéš — photo: Miro Nôta —

The New Wave Was Diverse on the Czech and Slovak Sides On 26 to 28 November 2018, a seminar entitled “Researching, Restoring, Distributing and Programming the Audiovisual Heritage” was held in Cinema Lumière in Bratislava. In addition to experts from the Slovak Film Institute, foreign guests also gave presentations at the event: Daniel Bird and Lukasz Ceranka, Mehelli Modi and Jonathan Owen. Owen focused on Western co-productions in Slovak cinema of the 1960s. He even wrote a book about this period: Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties (2011). How does this British expert view the Czecho-Slovak film environment?

In your book you talk about the heterogeneity and ambivalence of film movements in the 1960s but let’s take an opposite look at this. In your view, which elements of the Czechoslovak New Wave were fundamental and unifying?

I think that, largely on the Czech side of the Wave, one of the occurring themes or subjects was ordinary life and young people. I think youth is the one thing that connects both the Czech and the Slovak New Waves. The Sun in a Net (1962), a Štefan Uher film, and Black Peter (1963) by Miloš Forman, both of which are about young people. About the tension between the way young people really are and the kind of demands that are placed on them, a conflict between social demands, about what you are meant to do and your real implications for being a person. Important things through film, I think satire, comedy in these occurring features are well portrayed in terms of the films.

So I think these are some of the unifying qualities of those films. As a wave or as a phenomenon, I think that on both sides, on the Czech and the Slovak side, this was no formal movement, so I guess that means a lot of diversity on both sides as well. That’s what was great about it: a lot of freedom, individuality, a wide range of films that was made. In the West, we think about Forman or we think about films like Daisies (dir.

Věra Chytilová, 1966), but actually there were many films being made with a variety of formal approaches.

Which influences were crucial for the birth of the New Wave?

A few different factors, really. Some of the directors, they didn’t talk about inspirations, they just wanted to react to something they didn’t like, so I think it was that kind of films, reactions to stupidity, negative reactions in general. That was a part of it, and I think the fact that these filmmakers studied in FAMU in

Prague and, being exposed to international cinema, they could watch Italian neorealist films, or cinema verité films… International movements were a big influence. Forman was heavily influenced by neorealism.

In the second half of the 1960s, Juraj Jakubisko, Elo Havetta and Dušan Hanák started to make films on the Slovak side. How did the Slovak New Wave differ from Czech films?

I think Slovak development is rooted in this interest in combining modernism with folk motifs.

Jakubisko and Havetta were interested in folk motifs, rural life which I think we don’t see so much in the Czech context and I feel that the Slovak sensibility as expressed in Jakubisko’s films or Havetta is wilder, more carnivalesque. The Czech side of the New Wave is more in its most famous figures like Forman, more low key, more observational, more comic.

Some films were made in the 1960s in co-production.

This is also true for Jakubisko’s film Deserters and Pilgrims (Zbehovia a pútnici, 1968), this was an Italian co-production, and Birdies, Orphans and Fools (Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni, 1969) – a French co-production.

What reasons and intentions were linked to these collaborations?

I think he was seen as a great new talent, because on the Czech side Forman was the biggest author and I guess Jakubisko was embraced as a new author on the Slovak side. So it was maybe prestigious having this great director, from the Italian perspective he was a great artist. And again, commercial reasons are entailed too. From the Slovak side, of course, it was advantageous to obtain Italian resources and money for the colour and so on. And I think the French co-production with Samy Halfon: (I believe that) when Alain Robbe-Grillet made his films here, that basically ini-

tiated a kind of package deal, so I think the Jakubisko co-production emerged from that initial agreement with Robbe-Grillet. I believe that Samy Halfon, the producer, had a particular interest in experimental cinema.

Jakubisko’s project tended to be more of an experimental nature, more artistic nature, so I imagine he was personally drawn to Jakubisko.

Which tendencies do you see in Czechoslovak films from the periods after the 1960s?

I try to watch contemporary films too. Good films are also in the 1970s and 1980s, those decades I think are less well known from a western perspective.

That was when the west either lost interest or lost the awareness as well because of these fi lms not being distributed. I think for the 1970s and the 1980s, for instance, there are important trends. You don’t really get that art cinema, you got interesting genres, so I mean fairy-tale films in the 1980s for instance. Some of those we can watch now. Interesting fi lms made by Juraj Herz in those days which you can read as horror films.

I think the interesting cinema doesn’t stop after the 1960s. Maybe it’s not so much the auteurist style, it’s more genre-based, so a lot of interesting material afterwards as well. In the 1990s, there were people like Jan Němec, Chytilová was making provocative films, I think in the 1990s there was something like a revival of provocative cinema but there is not the same element of fantasy that there was in the 1960s.

In your view, what is written in the anglophone environment about films from the Eastern bloc, about Czech and Slovak cinema?

I think so much has changed, I know in Britain or in America… I wrote that at a time when I felt very much alone (2011) in pursuing this interest, the books that existed, critical texts were mainly older and I think they were stuck in those cold war interpretations, where every film had to be interpreted politically. But, really, there has been an explosion of interest not necessarily just in critical academic writing but on blogs and podcasts. There are all kinds of forums for opinion and a bigger range of responses now. We’re more used to watching more films from this region, there have been so many releases from British companies like Second Run and so on. The attitude has changed, generationally perhaps we are not as attached to reading films politically because, maybe for the kinds of films that have been released, that kind of analysis is less and less meaningful, because some films just don’t track themselves to those allegorical readings, so I’d like to think it has changed a lot. Mainly with an extension of the possibilities of seeing these films and additional ways of writing about them. So I’m optimistic. ◀

I think in the 1990s there was something like a revival of provocative cinema but there is not the same element of fantasy that there was in the 1960s.

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— text: Daniel Bernát —

The Miraculous Virgin Tests Her Power in the World In August 2018 the UK-based company Second Run released on digital media Štefan Uher’s film The Miraculous Virgin (Panna zázračnica, 1966), which comes from the Slovak Film Institute’s archives. It was launched on the market not only on DVD but also on BDs and the reactions were largely positive.

Rachel Bellwoar begins her text in Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com) with a short description of how she watched Uher’s surrealistically tuned film and how her perception of it developed, emphasising the visuality of the narration, in order to immediately discover her access key to the film. Water became this key, the first thing that the hero of the “story” Tristan (Ladislav Mrkvička) asks for. At the end of her article, Bellwoar states: “Maybe you could pass off everything that happens to Tristan as a drunkard’s dream but maybe we should find out what he’s been drinking first.

Life doesn’t need alcohol to be astounding. Neither does The Miraculous Virgin.”

In a short review of the Blu-ray on dvdbeaver. com, Gary Tooze highlights the image qualities of the film – not only from the technical aspect of the newly restored version but also from the aesthetic aspect as he expresses his admiration for cinematographer Stanislav Szomolányi’s work. “The Miraculous Virgin is a wonderfully imaginative, mixed genre, surreal transcendent effort with a poetic sensibility providing an enjoyable film-experience with themes involving desire, expectation, fantasy, art and much more.”

The image impressiveness of Uher’s film is also mentioned on mondo-digital.com. The title of the director’s film The Sun in a Net (Slnko v sieti, 1962) is also cited in the text as a substantially different work from The Miraculous Virgin – a more direct, more realistic and more famous film. The Miraculous Virgin is a shift “not unlike what Louis Malle did when he suddenly threw Black Moon into the world.” And further: “Evidently the film was not a roaring success when it was first released (and English-language distributors weren’t exactly lining up to snap up the rights), but it has aged remarkably well as a free-flowing river of dreamlike images tied around the concept of artistry and its place in the real world.” The article on mondo-digital.com also deals with bonus materials on the DVD and appreciates the exegesis by Michal Michalovič from the Science and Research

Department of the Slovak Film Institute which clarifies several contexts of Uher’s film. Let us add that the DVD also contains Uher’s short film Marked by Darkness (Poznačení tmou, 1959), a new documentary by Ivan Ostrochovský which explains the nature and meaning of The Miraculous Virgin, in addition to a period short film about how the filmmakers searched for the film’s female protagonist and also the film trailer.

Graham Williamson writes on geekshow.co.uk about Štefan Uher’s film as “a virtuoso exercise in imagery.” Moreover, he appreciates that the filmmakers managed to avoid being literary and rigid, even though it is an adaptation of Dominik Tatarka’s novella, who also wrote the script of the film. At the same time, Williamson notes that in some moments The Miraculous Virgin is reminiscent of Chytilová’s Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966) and Jakubisko’s Birdies, Orphans and Fools (Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni, 1969), but that it is also different in that “it is calm, monochrome and reflective where those films were frantic, colourful and anarchic.”

David Brook admits in his text on blueprintreview.co.uk that the extensive interpretation possibilities of The Miraculous Virgin with the lack of clear guidelines caused him some frustration; nevertheless, he states that as the film advanced, he gradually fell for its secrets. Also due to what all the reviewers mention – its visual aspect. Dr. Svet Atanasov reflects in his review on blu-ray.com that The Miraculous Virgin is good proof that talent and vision are far more important than a high budget and fancy equipment.

In conclusion, let us refer to a passage from the introduction to Trevor Johnston’s review in Sight & Sound: “Hats off to the Slovak Film Institute for retrieving this remarkable film from the shadows where political expedience had caused it to languish, reminding us that while the 1960s Czech new wave gets all the international attention, the cultural thaw was also significant for freedom of expression in Bratislava.” ◀

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