Front Theatre: Slovak National Uprising in Short Film

Front Theatre: Slovak National Uprising in Short Film

Up until 1989 over 100 short, mid-lenght, and feature films dedicated to the memoryof the Uprising have been made in the Short Film Studio in Bratislava. Their numbers grew especially on important anniversaries. Thus it was necessary to seek new ideas, points of view and film attitudes. However one was subjected to technical limitations and the other to a subjective interpretation of the Uprising. Formal conquests were tolerated if they were balanced by a sufficient dose of involvement. But how do we combine experimenting with ideological supervision?How do we combine authentic testimonial about the horrors of the war with filmed pick-ups, poetry and symbolism without going too far? If the disruption of documents in the 60s comes across as subversive, in the 70s it may very well be on the brink of kitsch. On a sample of 5 documents and one feature film we may ponder about “what the author ment“.

Banská Bystrica 1964 (1964, Ladislav Kudelka, 13')

... Was a hero born? (1965, Ivan Húšťava, 12')

Front theatre (1974, Ivan Húšťava, 11')

Where birds don't fly (1974, Vlado Kubenko, 10')

Echoes of glorious days (1974, Stanislava Jednráššáková, 15')

Amulet (1974, Dušan Trančík, 28')