The cinema of Slovakia encompasses a range of themes and styles typical of European cinema. Yet there are a certain number of recurring themes that are visible in the majority of the important works. These include rural settings,[6] folk traditions, and carnival.[7] Even in the field of experimental film-making, there is frequently a celebration of nature and tradition, as for example in Dušan Hanák'sPictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta, 1972). The same applies to blockbusters like Juraj Jakubisko'sA Thousand-Year Old Bee (Tisícročná včela, 1983).[8] The percentage of comedies, adventures, musicals, sci-fi films and similar genres has been low by comparison to dramas and historical films that used to include a notable subset of social commentaries on events from the decade or two preceding the film. One of them, Ján Kadár's and Elmar Klos'The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze, 1965),[9] gave Slovak (as well as Czech and generally Czechoslovak) filmmaking its first Oscar. Children's films were a perennial genre from the 1960s through the 1980s produced mainly as low-budget films by Slovak Television Bratislava. The themes of recent films have been mostly contemporary.
The center of Slovak filmmaking has been the Koliba studio[10] (whose formal name changed several times) in Bratislava. Some films conceived at the Barrandov Studios in Prague have had Slovak themes, actors, directors, and occasionally language, while Prague-based filmmakers and actors have sometimes worked in Slovakia.[11] In line with Slovak, Hungarian, and Czech histories, their past sharing of the Kingdom of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, there is early overlap between Slovak and Hungarian film, and later between Slovak and Czech film.[12] Some films are easily sorted out as one or the other, some films belong meaningfully to more than one national cinema.
Some 350 Slovak feature films have been made in the history of Slovak cinema. It has produced some notable cinematic works that have been well received by critics, as well as some domestic blockbusters. In recent years, Slovak films have often been made by working (wholly or partly) with foreign production companies. Joint Slovak and Czech projects have been particularly common. The Slovak film industry has been dogged by lack of money intensified by the country's small audience (2.9–5.4 million inhabitants), which translates to the films' limited potential for primary, domestic revenue.
History
Early 20th century
US Film company (defunct in 1922) poster
A Slovak-themed drama, Snowdrop from the Tatras (Sněženka z Tatier, dir. Olaf Larus-Racek, 1919), about a maturing girl looking for her place in a city appeared within months of the creation of Czechoslovakia. The first Slovak full-length feature movie was Jaroslav Siakeľ's Jánošík in 1921. It placed Slovak filmmaking among the earlier 10 cinemas in the world to produce such a film.[13] Other feature films were released early, but the absence of a permanent local studio and the competition from the emerging conglomerate of studios and distributors (AB Studio, later Barrandov) in nearby Prague proved daunting. An early international recognition came from the International Venice Film Festival for Karol Plicka's The Earth Sings (Zem spieva, 1933).[14] Martin Frič's Jánošík of 1935 was released internationally, including in Italy and Germany, and was shown in Slovak-American communities until the 1950s.
The first Department of Film in Czechoslovakia (probably the third such department in Europe)[6] was opened at the School of Industrial Arts in Bratislava in 1938, headed by Plicka and with the future Oscar-winning director Ján Kadár among the students,[15] but it was closed after Slovakia's independence in 1939.
The 1940s
The authorities set up the short-film studio Nástup ("Muster"), the precursor of the Koliba Studio,[16] to produce newsreels during World War II, but it made no feature films during that period. Although with a substantial post-war makeover and change of name, the studio continued its production after Czechoslovakia was partly reconstituted in 1945, and the feature film industry began to take off. During a brief period after the war, the Communists had not yet gained full control, allowing one or two interesting films to be made in the Central European countries, including Paľo Bielik's Wolves' Lairs (Vlčie diery, 1948) in Slovakia.[6] The Communist Party, which valued the propaganda potential of cinema, took power in Czechoslovakia in the coup d'état of 1948.
The 1950s
Within a few years, film production was heavily controlled by the state and films were not allowed to undermine Stalinism. Psychologising was frowned upon and characters became cardboard cut-outs subservient to political ideals. A dominant feature of film poetics of this period was descriptive-symbolic stylization. Even the titles of films like Dam (Priehrada, Paľo Bielik, 1950), Young Hearts (Mladé srdcia, Václav Kubásek, 1952), and Hamlets Have Started Off (Lazy sa pohli, Paľo Bielik, 1952) were designed to represent social and societal change. The title of The Struggle Will End Tomorrow (Boj sa skončí zajtra, Miroslav Cikán, 1951) symbolized the irreversibility of what was shown to be the progress of the working class. The name of the leading character in Kathy (Katka,Ján Kadár, 1949) was popular at the time, and so her "ascent" to an industrial laborer was laid out as a better future for thousands of young women.[17]
Unlike their colleagues in Prague and neighboring countries in the first years after the Communist takeovers, the Slovak directors of development were consistently unable to "meet the plan" outlined by the Communist Party and were unsuccessful in drafting the required number of socialist-realist projects,[17] which affected the number of films passed for production although the money for them would have been made available by the authorities. Most of the resulting films were neither popular nor critically acclaimed. Exceptions among the former included Josef Mach's folkloric musical Native Country (Rodná zem, 1953) with ticket sales, relative to population, among the highest in Slovak filmmaking. Across the Communist-ruled part of Central Europe, there was a recognition that for an active and popular film industry to exist, film-makers should be given more control of production. This process accelerated towards the end of the 1950s.
The 1960s
According to a 1990s poll of film specialists,[18] five of the ten best Slovak films were made in the 1960s. As in neighbouring countries, the early 1960s saw the fruition of the policy of relaxation, which mixed powerfully with external cinematic influences such as Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave to produce Slovakia's first international film successes. Although there were isolated successful feature films from Slovakia leading up to the 1960s, the first Slovak film to make a well-marked international impact was not produced until 1962 — Štefan Uher'sThe Sun in a Net (Slnko v sieti).[19] It is frequently thought of as an aesthetic precursor to the Czechoslovak New Wave,[20] which emerged over the following years. Its opaque symbolism and anti-propagandist themes caused it to be harshly criticized by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia.[21]
Another important work from this time was Peter Solan's The Boxer and Death (Boxer a smrť, 1962), which was set in a Nazi concentration camp and directly tackled the Holocaust. The Boxer and Death was one of a series of Czechoslovak films from the 1960s that looked back at the moral dilemmas of ordinary people caught up in the Second World War and encouraged viewers to re-evaluate their responses to the war. Many of these films chose the Holocaust as their focus, and Slovak director Ján Kadár, co-directing with frequent collaborator, Czech director Elmar Klos, achieved a major international success in this genre with the Czech-produced, Slovak-language The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze),[9] which won a Special Mention when it played at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965 and went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film the following year.
The Czech feature The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1968), Slovak-born Juraj Herz's grotesque black comedy about the social context of the Final Solution, is a cult film in both Czechia and Slovakia and has an increasing reputation internationally. Herz is a concentration camp survivor, but he never made a film directly addressing that experience.[22]
The second half of the decade saw the emergence of a new generation of directors. Three of their films were still ranked among the ten best Slovak films in a poll of film academics and critics in the late 1990s[18] that also listed The Sun in a Net and The Shop on Main Street. By comparison to earlier Slovak films, the three leaned towards avant-garde filmmaking and were consequently more successful in art houses than in wide release: Juraj Jakubisko's two features Deserters and Pilgrims (Zbehovia a pútnici, 1968) and Birdies, Orphans and Fools (Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni, 1969) and Dušan Hanák's 322 (the code for cancer in medical records of diseases, 1969).
The 1970s
Following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, firm government control was regained over the film industry. Almost all of the major Slovak directors initially found it more difficult to work. Dušan Hanák's acclaimed feature-length documentary Pictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta, 1972) sought a possible refuge in a topic sufficiently removed from big politics to survive on the margins of official production and yet, executed with a finesse that gave it a wide international appeal. It visited remote, trapped places in order to meditate on what lies hidden beneath the concept of "an authentic life".[20] An elegiac work whose images could apply to Appalachia or any other poor region,[23]Pictures of the Old World still offended the authorities and the distribution was stopped two days after its limited release.[24]
Despite the circumstances, only one film, Martin Hollý Jr.'s Fever (Horúčka, 1975),[25] was produced to advance the Communist Party's coercively negative view of the unprecedented relaxation of communism in 1968. Dušan Hanák was able to make his poetically realistic Rosy Dreams (Ružové sny, 1976),[26] the first Central European feature film with the Roma at the core of the story and a singular creative achievement of the decade. Popular entertainment was briefly served by Martin Ťapák's Pacho, the Highwayman of Hybe (Pacho, hybský zbojník, 1976), a spoof on the legend of Jánošík that had already appeared in several Slovak and Polish film versions. Government control was generally greater in the Federal Capital of Prague than it was in Bratislava, Slovak Capital, so some directors from Prague made films in Slovak part of the federation to avoid restrictions on film-making in the Czech part, including Juraj Herz (returning to his native country) and Jan Švankmajer.
The 1980s
The more relaxed conditions became apparent in the 1980s when Slovakia had perhaps its most successful film-making period, and acclaimed directors from the 1960s who had been able to make only short films (Juraj Jakubisko) or only an occasional feature (Dušan Hanák) returned with important and mature works. Highlights from this period include Hanák'sI Love, You Love (Ja milujem, ty miluješ, 1989), Jakubisko's A Thousand-Year Old Bee (Tisícročná včela, 1983),[8]Uher'sShe Grazed Horses on Concrete, AKA A Ticket to Heaven (Pásla kone na betóne, 1982),[27]Martin Hollý'sSignum Laudis (1980), Zoro Záhon'sThe Assistant (Pomocník, 1982) and Dušan Rapoš'sA Fountain for Susan (Fontána pre Zuzanu, 1986). This streak of successful film-making is all the more remarkable given that in other Communist countries the 1980s, especially the late '80s, were generally speaking a fallow time, particularly in the Czech Republic.
The 1990s
In contrast to the 1980s, the decade following 1990 was one of the worst in the history of Slovak cinema. Only a few full-length feature films were produced in this period (36 films with major Slovak participation between 1992 and 2002) and interest in domestic films practically vanished. The reasons for this were a desperate lack of money in Slovak culture as a result of the transformation of Slovakia's economy following the Velvet Revolution, the decrease in potential audience by the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993, and a sharp decrease in the previous high subsidies for culture and film provided by the Communist government. Ironically, the work of the only major Slovak director to emerge in this period, Martin Šulík,[28] has been more popular internationally, and particularly in the Czech Republic and Poland, than in his native country.
Also, under Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar, the Koliba Film Studio was privatized in 1995 and within two years Mečiar's children are said to have held an 80% stake in the company. Allegations of asset stripping and fraud dogged the company, and after Mečiar was voted out of office in 1998 the Ministry of Culture sued Koliba to recover money given to make feature films that were not produced, one of a number of suits launched by the post-Mečiar government in relation to companies that had been privatized by Mečiar. The legal action dragged on through the early 2000s and did nothing to clarify the position of Koliba, effectively prolonging the stagnation and leaving the studios dilapidated and in disrepair.
Nevertheless, the Slovak film industry did not completely grind to a halt and important post-Communist era films include Šulík's Everything I Like (Všetko čo mam rád, 1992),[29] and The Garden (Záhrada, 1995),[30] both lyrical films that depict tense father-son relationships, and Vlado Balco's Rivers of Babylon (1998),[31] which is sometimes interpreted as a critical allegory of Mečiar's rise to power. Juraj Jakubisko, working in Prague, made An ambiguous report about the end of the world (Nejasná zpráva o konci světa, 1997), at the time the most expensive film ever made in the Czech Republic.
The cinematographer Martin Štrba has also been highly successful in this period, being respected in both Czechia and Slovakia. He collaborates regularly with Martin Šulík and the Czech director Vladimír Michálek and has also worked with the Czech New Wave icon Věra Chytilová.
In 1999, an international film festival was started in Bratislava in an attempt to foster a better environment for making feature films and larger appreciation among Slovak audiences.
Questions over national origin
Given that in the periods from the invention of film in 1896 to 1938 and from 1945 to 1992 Slovakia did not exist as an independent country, there has been some controversy over the naming of certain films as specifically either Slovak or Czech. Although the Czech and Slovak halves of Czechoslovakia each had separate languages, they were close enough for film talent to move freely between the two republics. As a result, during the Czechoslovak period — and even after it — a number of Slovak directors made Czech-language films in Prague, including Juraj Herz and Juraj Jakubisko.
Particularly intense debate[12] arose in the 1990s around the Oscar-winning The Shop on Main Street, which was jointly directed by one Budapest-born Jewish Slovak director (Ján Kadár) and one Czech director (Elmar Klos), based on a short story written in Czech by Jewish Slovak author Ladislav Grosman,[32] financed by the central authorities through the film's studio at Prague and shot on location in Slovakia in Slovak with Slovak actors. Czechs generally consider the film to be Czech (while they see the theme as Slovak) on the basis of the film's studio and the home of its directors; Slovaks generally consider the film to be Slovak on the basis of its language, themes, and filming locations.
Notable films
Bathory, theatrical release poster, the most expensive Slovak film.
The Shop on Main Street is a 1965 Czechoslovakian film about the Aryanization program during World War II in the Slovak State.
The Czechoslovak New Wave is a term used for the Czechoslovak filmmakers who started making films in the 1960s. The directors commonly included are Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Pavel Juráček, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš, Evald Schorm, Hynek Bočan, Juraj Herz, Juraj Jakubisko, Štefan Uher and others. The movement was sometimes called the "Czechoslovak film miracle".
Juraj Jánošík was a Slovak highwayman. Jánošík has been the main character of many Slovak novels, poems, and films. According to the legend, he robbed nobles and gave the loot to the poor, a deed often attributed to the famous Robin Hood. The legend is known in neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic. The actual robber had little to do with the modern legend, whose content partly reflects the ubiquitous folk myths of a hero taking from the rich and giving to the poor. However, the legend was also shaped in important ways by the activists and writers in the 19th century when Jánošík became the key highwayman character in stories that spread in the north counties of the Kingdom of Hungary and among the local Gorals inhabitants of the Podhale region north of the Tatras. The image of Jánošík as a symbol of resistance to oppression was reinforced when poems about him became part of the Slovak and Czech middle and high school literature curriculum, and then again with the numerous films that propagated his modern legend in the 20th century. During the anti-Nazi Slovak National Uprising, one of the partisan groups bore his name.
Public Against Violence was a political movement established in Bratislava, Slovakia in November 1989. It was the Slovak counterpart of the Czech Civic Forum.
Ján Kadár was a Slovak film writer and director of Jewish heritage.
Juraj Jakubisko was a Slovak film director. He directed fifteen feature films, between 1967 and 2008. He often took on the dual role of cinematographer, and is often also credited as a screenplay writer as he usually co-writes or writes the scripts of his movies. In 2000 he was named Best Slovak Director of the 20th century by film critics and journalists. His work is often described as magical realism.
Ľubomír Feldek is a Slovak poet, writer, playwright, and translator. He is married to Oľga Feldeková.
Jozef Kroner was a Slovak actor. His brother Ľudovít Kroner, daughter Zuzana Kronerová, and wife Terézia Hurbanová-Kronerová were also actors. He starred in the Oscar-winning film The Shop on Main Street, and in more than 50 other Slovak films, as well as in several Czech, Bulgarian and Hungarian productions. He never studied acting; his career started in amateur theater troupes.
The Sun in a Net is a 1963 film that became a key film in the development of Slovak and Czechoslovak cinema from the mandated Socialist-Realist filmmaking of the repressive 1950s towards the Czechoslovak/Czech New Wave and socially critical or experimental films of the 1960s marked by a gradual relaxation of communist control. The Sun in a Net received multiple votes in a wide survey of Czech and Slovak film academics and critics in the late 1990s asking them for their lists of the 10 best films in the history of filmmaking in the former Czechoslovakia.
Rosy Dreams is a 1977 Czechoslovak film. Despite its whimsical poetic style, it was the first Central European feature film that put the Romani (Gypsy) community at the center stage in a realistically reflected manner. It was also a singular artistic achievement in Slovak and Czechoslovak cinema during the period after the Soviet invasion of 1968 by Dušan Hanák, director of several acclaimed films who maintained the integrity of his vision and style throughout the vagaries of Central European filmmaking in the second half of the 20th century. In a broader sense, Rosy Dreams was prescient in Central European cinema because it dealt with a minority group whose plight, not discussed openly then, has since become one of the key issues in several Central European societies. The clash of the communities is depicted with the subtle tender attitude inherited from the Czechoslovak New Wave.
She Grazed Horses on Concrete is a film which lays out serious topics that include a woman's capacity to hold her own in society, sexual mores, and abortion, and balances them with comedy and irony in proportions that instantly made it one of the biggest domestic blockbusters in Slovak cinema.
Czechoslovakism is a concept which underlines reciprocity of the Czechs and the Slovaks. It is best known as an ideology which holds that there is one Czechoslovak nation, though it might also appear as a political program of two nations living in one common state. The climax of Czechoslovakism fell on 1918-1938, when as a one-nation-theory it became the official political doctrine of Czechoslovakia; its best known representative was Tomáš Masaryk. Today Czechoslovakism as political concept or ideology is almost defunct; its remnant is a general sentiment of cultural affinity, present among many Czechs and Slovaks.
Juraj Herz was a Slovak film director, actor, and scene designer, associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave movement of the 1960s. He is best known for his 1969 horror/black comedy The Cremator, often cited as one of the best Czechoslovak films of all time, though many of his other films achieved cult status. He directed for both film and television, and in the latter capacity he directed episodes of a French-Czech television series based on George Simenon's Maigret novels.
Dušan Hanák is a Slovak film director.
IFF Art Film, previously known as Artfilm and Art Film Fest, is an annual international film festival founded in Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia in 1993, shortly after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The first event was held on 14 June 1993, under the auspices of UNESCO. It is the longest continuously running international film festival in the country.
Birds, Orphans and Fools is a 1969 Czechoslovak film directed by Juraj Jakubisko. The film is about three people who are all orphaned by political violence. Set in an unspecified time and place, the movie is a parable about three people who face a tough, violent world and survive by adopting a childlike philosophy of life and live a life of foolish, joyful denial.
Ladislav Grosman was a Slovak novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for being the author of The Shop on Main Street, which he adapted into a critically acclaimed Academy Award-winning film in 1965. Grosman became proficient in Czech after he moved to Czechoslovakia's Czech-speaking part in his late twenties, where he worked as a correspondent and editor in the Prague bureau of the Slovak newspaper Pravda. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he moved to Israel, where he died in 1981.
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel is a 2018 documentary film directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur that focuses on the life and work of the Czechoslovak New Wave film director Jiří Menzel, and also explores the Czech and Slovak New Wave cinema of the 1950-70s.
↑ Sources sometimes speak of specific prizes for this and the other two Czechoslovak films at the festival, but the recognition actually was a joint honorable mention for the collection of films from Czechoslovakia at the festival which was then called Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica."History." La Biennale di Venezia.Archived 2017-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Barbara Pearce Johnson, et al. Dialogue on Film: Kadar Study Guide. 1979.
1 2 Bartov, Omer “Celluloid Soldiers: Cinematic Images of the Wehrmacht” pages 130-143 from Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy edited by Ljubica & Mark Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 page 137.
↑ Votruba, Martin. "The Shop on Main Street". Slovak Studies Program. University of Pittsburgh. Archived from the original on 2016-01-20. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
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