heralded a significant chain of development, and Slnko v sieti [The Sun in a Net, 1962] – now digitally restored – proved to be a landmark film, its creative innovation preceding the birth of the Czech New Wave in the following year.
films from this period, Hanák’s Obrazy starého sveta [Pictures of the Old World, 1972] and Ja milujem, ty miluješ [I Love, You Love, 1980] were instantly banned.
While Slovak production maintained a separate identity, both Czechs and Slovaks studied together at FAMU [the Prague Film School] and creative interaction was the norm. Nonetheless, in the late 1960s, the focus for innovation seemed to shift to Slovakia through the work of Juraj Jakubisko, Elo Havetta, and Dušan Hanák – signalling, as the screenwriter, Lubor Dohnal put it, the move from a cinema based on politics to one based on aesthetics. Coproduction with Western Europe was also a feature of the period, with three of Jakubisko’s films made with Italian or French partners, and two SlovakFrench co-productions of films by Alain Robbe-Grillet.
The realities of the free market created after the fall of Communism and the establishment of the independent Slovak Republic in 1993 led to a rapid decline in production that is only now beginning to re-establish itself. The one director to establish an international reputation in this period has been Martin Šulík, with Neha [Tenderness, 1991], Záhrada [The Garden, 1995], and, more recently, Cigán [Gypsy, 2011]. Šulík has also been active in documentary, most notably with his 26-part series Zlatá šedesátá [The Glorious Sixties, 2009], a further instance of Czech-Slovak collaboration, which provides a unique insight into the sources of the cinematic achievements of that era. Also, in recent years, one can point to the multiple awards gained by Juraj Lehotský’s documentary Slepé lásky [Blind Loves, 2008] and the international interest in Zuzana Liová’s Dom [The House, 2011], and Iveta Grofová’s Až do mesta Aš [Made in Ash, 2012].
What seemed initially like a charmed period of free creation, of course, came to an end with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. One of the cultural consequences of the invasion was the fact that films produced in 1968-70 not only failed to achieve international exposure but also attracted the attention of bureaucratic censorship. During the period of socalled ‘normalisation’ [1969-89], Slovak production actually increased. Writing in The Oxford History of World Cinema [1996], the Polish critic, Marek Hendrykowski suggests that censorship in Slovakia was less rigorous than in the Czech lands and the presence of many films from this period in the current selection would seem to confirm this. On the other hand, many filmmakers found their careers at an end or chose exile and two of the most remarkable
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Carefully selected by Slovak film historians, this catalogue of The Best of Slovak Film, 1921-91 provides a representative introduction to a rich tradition that has achieved considerable breadth in its arguably short history. Contemporary criticism offers useful contextualisation and there are detailed and informative filmographies. Many titles will be familiar but many more await their discovery by international audiences. Peter Hames