Kaunas International Film Festival

Kaunas International Film Festival 5th edition invites the audience to discover one of the most interesting phases of cinematic history and invited to Slovak cinematic retrospective “New Wave“. Festival opening of the retrospective took place on 29 September 7 p.m. in “Zalgiris arena”.

The creative Slovak cinematic golden age came to broader light only at the end of the eighties, when Czechoslovakia struggled free from a socialistic regime. By then, films, made in the sixties, were hid away from viewers and film makers were ignored for a long time. Today, Slovak new wave films are appreciated for aesthetics and ideas and, together with works of Czech filmmakers are considered as “Czechoslovak cinematic wonder“.

Kaunas Film Festival will show these most important Slovak new wave films as Štefan Uher “The Sun in a Net”, which suggested absolutely new attitude to a history, also another world known work of this director – “The Organ“. Films of the most creative Slovak cinematic period are very different: ones, like Peter Solan „The Boxer and Death“, analyses difficult moral problems and the darkest periods of humankind history, others – especially directors of younger generation Juraj Jakubisko and Elo Havetta works „The Prime of Life“ and “Celebration in the Botanical Garden” – try playfully and spontaneously to provoke a serious communist reality mask.

In the evening of the retrospective opening viewers set their eyes on Martin Šulík documentary “25 Forms the Sixties “ , the 1st part which told how the Czechoslovak New Wave had destroyed rooted cinematic stereotypes and left a significant mark in a history of global cinema.

According to Tomas Tengmark, Kaunas International Film Festival Programme Producer the decision to introduce Slovak new wave cinema, arose after realizing that despite that Lithuanian audience had seen some of Czechoslovak cinematic “golden age” films, Czech directors were well known, but Slovak heritage was still unknown. “With this retrospective the festival wants to present films directed by Dušan Hanák, Peter Solan, Eduard Grečner, Juraj Jakubiskoto broaden the view about European film heritage,“ – said T. Tengmark.

Dušan Krištofík, Ambassador of the Slovak Republic in Riga, participated in a presentation of the retrospective and greeted the audience. Katarina Tomková, representative of public relations at Slovak Film Institute, and one of the Slovak new wave directors Dušan Hanák also saluted festival‘s viewers. Mr. Hanák presented his film “322“ in the festival as well.