07/12/2022 - The sextuplet of classic Slovakian flicks from the 1960s and 1970s is available to view via VoD in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria

Birds, Orphans and Fools by Juraj Jakubisko

LaCinetek is a VoD platform dedicated to the greatest films of the 20th century, and Slovak cinema is the latest addition to its Hidden Treasures section. This strand is curated by film institutions that present rare and beloved films that they have restored. “So far, for us it's been almost a hermetically sealed selection,” says Rastislav Steranka, director of the National Cinematography Center at the Slovak Film Institute (SFI), about the cooperation with LaCinetek. “Little, unknown national film industries, such as Slovakia, have very little chance of having their films featured in these worldwide selections unless they are included in the generally accepted canon. I thought about how to get more Slovak classics on such a prestigious platform – films that are unknown but competitive. The only possible such space on LaCinetek was the Hidden Treasures section,” adds the director of the National Cinematography Center.

The Slovak selection, titled The Golden Era of Slovak Cinema, includes the formalistically inventive The Sun in a Net (1962) by Štefan Uher, which the national film awards are named after; Peter Solan’s satirical comedy The Barnabáš Kos Case (1964), about an ambitious triangle player; the folk fable told as a modernist rendition The Return of Dragon (1967) by Eduard Grečner; Juraj Jakubisko’s surreal tragicomedy Birds, Orphans and Fools (1969); Elo Havetta’s drama about World War I veterans, Wild Lilies (1972); and the creative anthropological documentary Pictures of the Old World (1972) by Dušan Hanák. All of the films have been digitally restored, and are accompanied by introductory videos and two short documentaries about The Sun in a Net and The Return of Dragon.

The Slovak Film Institute is the first national film archive to have received the opportunity to introduce its own selection on LaCinetek despite not being a founding member of the platform. The Slovakian films will be available for at least three years in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria. One more film outside the SFI selection is available on the platform, Peter Solan’s The Boxer and Death (1963), which has been picked by French director Michel Hazanavicius as part of his own personal selection.