Slovak State Film Grew Out of a Dark Place, Ji.hlava Festival Historian Says
The dark origins of modern Slovak film are seldom discussed in Slovakia, says historian Petra Hanakova – and that’s precisely why she dedicated herself to digging through archives to unearth the unlikely wave of movies made there during World War II.
Indeed, it’s sometimes overlooked that while the Czech lands were under Nazi occupation in 1939, the Slovak State was founded as a clerical client fascist state of Hitler’s Germany. The state was the first at least officially independent Slovak nation in history, with Bratislava named its capital and the quisling priest Jozef Tiso as its top dog.
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“It is a very interesting, still not mentally processed, historical period in Slovakia,” says Hanakova, who screened 24 discoveries from the wartime roots of Slovak national cinema at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival.
“From the point of view of film production, it’s practically unknown, especially abroad,” she says. “I recently published a book about it at the Slovak Film Institute, and since the research is still fresh, we wanted to consider it also in this way,” on cinema screens for the first time in decades.
Filmmakers of the period were remarkably productive for a wartime economy, and got busy shooting an incredible range of work, from 1944’s animated, Disney-style “The Mysterious Old Man” by Viktor Kubal, about the wonders of electrification, to lyrical tributes to timeless peasant landscapes that are notably missing any hint of politics.
“Summer Under the Krivan Mountain” made in 1943 by Eugen Matelicka captures in lyrical imagery the rituals of women harvesting with scythes in Tatra Mountain meadows, while Julius Kovacevic’s 1940 portrait of hardworking laborers informs audiences that Slovak history is being written by Slovaks.
Audience responses were fascinating, says Hanakova, if sometimes troubling. One youthful audience member asked her after a screening, “Which one was this Tiso?”
Hanakova says a particularly rich find from the period was Palo Bielik’s short film “On the Island of Cormorants” from 1944. “It is about the “cohabitation“ of two communities: filmmakers making the movie and these rare birds. It has a beautiful luminosity. A sort of romantic picture of the floodplain forest around the Danube. And it bears virtually no trace of politics.”
Several other films produced by the fascist Slovak state also seem to conspicuously avoid any mention of the regime, she notes. “It was a matter of choice,” Hanakova says about her curatorial efforts.
“Slovak film output of the period is small, but rich in genres. Of course, today we are mainly interested in politics when researching the history of states that collaborated with Hitler during the war. But the past is always more complex.”
Cinema of wartime Slovakia always grew out of a balancing of “what the ‘time’ demands and what its art ‘wants.’” The films were made by directors who served the state, at least somewhat, but who also found ways to express themselves, says Hanakova.
“Even under totalitarianism, art is and can be created.”
One perennial want under any effective totalitarian state is the appeal to history, of course. So it’s not surprising that at least one film from Slovakia’s dark times is centered on the figure of Janosik, a 15th-century Robin Hood figure and legendary highwayman who once terrorized the rich and powerful.
Bielik’s 1942 film “Disappearing Romance” is one of the earliest of many from the region to focus Janosik, in this iteration in documentary form as it chronicles artists crafting and decorating shepherds’ axes, the symbol of the outlaw hero.
“The contemporary image of Janosik was rather ambivalent,” Hanakova says. “On the one hand, he was a national hero, a long-haired handsome man in costume – but on the other hand, he was a ‘latent’ communist who rallied against the ‘masters’ and against oppression. The film also resonated during the Slovak National Uprising.” That period, at the end of World War I when former colonies were breaking off from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire, was one that embraced democratic values, she points out. “At that time Janosik was actually inciting against fascism.”
As for the title of the Slovak fascist-era cinema sidebar, says Hanakova, she chose “We Have Our Film!” as an “appropriation.” The term was originally a headline from state newspapers of the time, in particular, the daily Slovak or Gardista, in which obedient journalists praised the arrival of the first full-length Slovak state film (“From the Tatras to the Sea of ??Azov”).
“And it is also the title of my new book, which the section in Ji.hlava accompanies and was inspired by,” says Hanakova.
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