"I grew up in a village." "I had no idea film existed, not until I was 10 years old." "I saw my first actual film when I was 11." "It was a grand debut, Man of Aran." "I was in my first year at the secondary school." "The town boys knew their stuff, Chaplin films and all that." "There was actually a monastery where they showed kids films." "But I had never seen moving pictures on a silver screen." "I was in aw." "I remember when my aunt, whom I stayed with, heard my school was going to the movies, she warned me not to be scared seeing a car or a train moving." "She said the first time she went, she almost ran away, because it was all coming at her and she thought she'd get crashed." "Soon after that came the film Zem spieva." "Those were huge experiences." "The first because they're first, and afterward, I'd read more, I was a subscriber of Kino Revue, and I started seeing more, not only actors, that of course, but also the work of directors and the photography." "I'd take notes, so I new exactly..." "Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde by Mamoulian." "Than a film with Garry Cooper, The Wedding Night or something, starring Anna Sten." "She was scared to spend the night in one room with Garry Cooper." "The whole night, he sat on a sofa watching her sleep." "I don't remember the whole story, just that Anna Sten was the sleeping beauty." "When I came to Paris, I dove into the film clubs." "And I saw all the avant-garde silent movies." "The whole Soviet avant-garde." "What was here to be seen?" "Chapayev." "Or We Are from Kronstadt." "I was translating a novel by Leon Moussinac." "As a translator of his work I went to see him, asking him if he could write some kind of an introduction, for the Slovakian readers and so." "Novels don't have introductions, but I just wanted to meet him." "I arranged it that way, went to talk to him, and talking, we came to film." "I said I was a huge fan, and he asked me "Why don't you go to IDEC?"" "Then I got a job in the radio, broadcast for Czechoslovakia." "Moussinac arranged for me to have a special student status." "I could attend lectures at IDEC without doing the exams." "I picked cherries from the cake." "When Rosellini came to present his Rome, Open City, I was there." "Even for the discussion afterwards." "Then Cocteau brought a working version of his Beauty and the Beast." "Then it was René Clair with Silence Is Golden." "All these artists came, introducing their work, sometimes films in progress, for example Daquin came once, showing samples of his Les freres Bouquinquant." "These encounters were great, interesting and inspiring." "I didn't have to pass any exams, as I mentioned before." "It was both comfortable and pleasant." "And enriching." "But then Laco Kalina came to Paris for his honeymoon." "We'd known each other from long ago." "He sent me a wire, asking if I knew any cheap place to stay." "I helped them, and hanging out, he asked me about my plans, if I was going to immigrate." "This was after the February events." "I said no, I was coming back for sure." "When I told him I went to IDEC as a special student, he said when I come to Bratislava, I can start working for film." "They were starting this studio, a group of screenplay writers." "As a coincidence, my classmates Bukovèan and Nitra were in it." "Our cinema Hviezda presents the first Slovakian feature, Varuj..." "When dr." "Beluš talks of this film before the premiere, he talks of cooperation between Slovak and Czech film makers." "The chairman of the Slovakian National Council, dr." "Letrich." "Artist who worked on the film." "The whole Slovakian film was rather a big group, a group of directors-to-be and screenplay writers-to-be." "They met, hung out, and they got paid for it." "And every now and then, they thought about making a film." "There was a contest for the best literary film theme." "There might have been hundred submissions or so, also by people like Ljubo Ondrejov, Palo Bunèák, Žáry." "I really liked the short story by Žáry, so I decided to make it a screenplay." "That was my first step as a screenwriter." "That was 1949." "Together with Rozner, we wrote a short film story." "It was about a Slovakian girl, who immigrated with her parents to the States before World War II." "She returned home for a visit, and she liked it so much that she stayed." "And now... what were her reasons to stay?" "It couldn't be nostalgia, none of that stuff." "Her reasons should be class-conscious." "Well, how do you make a young girl class-conscious?" "That's where we lost it." "The screenplay got turned down." "In the meantime, Rozner and I made another attempt, to make a short montage about the Slovakian state." "Dutka publicly announces that for those who resist violence, the gates of Illiad should open." "A country made by God himself." "The order was readily executed by Linka's guard and the UŠB." "They hunted down and tortured political opponents of fascism." "We would come to this building, now the Film Institute, go to the cutting room on the top floor, and we'd watch all we wanted." "We edited, labeled, smoked a lot..." "When Vodierka, the editor, came, he nearly started kicking us." "We found out later that it was highly inflammable material." "We cut and edited almost all the warjournals, whatever we needed and liked." "There were Tiso and Šadoma, encouters with Germans..." "Then Kalina took all the materials and made it a short film." "The horrible fruit of Slovakian fascism was ripening here, in the Hell of the German concentration camps." "Where was their conscience?" "Innocent victims were freezing, starving, dying of plague." "As a comradely help, we got directors from Barrandov." "For example The Devil's Wall was made by Wasserman." "This young gun, Kubásek, got so friendly with the ladies from Žitný Ostrov, that they would bring him geese and ducks." "Or Cikán, he really got fond of Slovakia." "I think his past was a bit bruised by some kind of collaboration." "Here he was welcomed with open arms, and moreover, he made a film that got the State Award." "Which meant full rehabilitation." "Bahna, Bielik and Letrich were all amateurs who somehow got into film." "Bielik had good education, just like Jánošík, right?" "Bahna... he himself would not talk about it very much..." "He was in Germany, in UFE, doing nobody knows what." "But after the war, who would talk about being taught by Germans?" "He kept quite about it." "But he did have basic film skills from Berlin." "Letrich came from directing in the radio." "He was famous for this thing..." "When rehearsing a scene, he closed his eyes and listened." "He only cared about the voices." "The visual aspect didn't matter." "That was the cameraman's job." "Film director Letrich is setting up a scene in the village Vrzáèka, through which the Nazi troops are retreating in panic." "A sign to the sound master, and another shot is being done." "An ambitious set with copies of old wooden houses of Orava was a big challenge for all the film makers, whose professional and artistic skills grow with the demands." "The artistic director Kalina set up a hundred of themes." "Such as... indecisive middle peasant." "Indecisive townsman." "Who thinks positively, though, and wants to build socialism, too." "Then an enemy who tries to find a way to get out of here, or at least to sabotage it." "And so on." "Considering the political situation, at least the themes were separate." "Kalina did a greatjob." "He found a hundred of possible themes." "Of course, he was convinced, as we all were." "At least speaking for myself." "But when it came to actual filming, our convictions had gone colder." "As for Priehrada, Dominik Tatarka wrote a lovely film story." "We could say it had the spirit of Eizenstein's General Line." "There was a vision, as well as the reality of building a dam." "But the council didn't approve of it." "To them, this poetic, visionary line was laughable." "Stupid." "But to leave only the manual, hard work, wouldn't sufficiently praise the working intelligence." "They simply didn't like it, so they rejected it, and gave it to Bielik, who said he would fix it up." "I think that film craft wise, and even dramaturgy wise, it was quite well done." "But it was still on the same level as Gregor Tajovsky." "Just a village drama - a farmer, his daughter" " Kralovièová," "Valach - the saboteur..." "Now you're going to till?" "Where did you go boozing now?" "Who?" "I slave here every day, Without any help." "Don't fret." "You're the boozer." "Should I start a union for you?" "If you don't like it, pack up and the hell with you." "There could still be a positive character of a catholic priest." "Soon after that, the church had become frowned upon." "In general, it was very well accepted..." "The good priest, his positive take on the dam and all." "Technical progress is good, I'm happy to exchange old for new." " Cheers." " To the bloom of this land." " I hope..." "Film Clean Handed was the first to criticize starting of the coops." "Rabovská wrote a story about a county-format dictator, who's in power in the time of the collectivization." "The film had been in progress when the 20th Convention took place." "That's when Letrich came up with an idea." "Let's make Molèán, the dictator, played by Záborský, look like Stalin." "And so we did." "We got rid of the previous, we started shooting again," "Záborský with the moustache his hand in his vest like Stalin..." "And we finished it in this way." "But after the Convention, after short period of liberalization, came the events in Hungary, Poznan, Berlin and what not." "All of a sudden, liberalization turned into re-stalinization." "Letrich finished his film, and it wasn't welcome anymore." "The whole film, the moustache and all, ended up in a safe where it had stayed for 20 years." "You don't..." "I mean really..." "I'm Molèan, Molèan, Molèan!" "We offered Barabáš to make A Song About the Gray Pigeon." "The theme was mine, the screenplay I did with Bukovèan." "He did the first three stories, I did the other three." "The reason was that we did not like each other." "To work on a film together was out of question." " What's this?" " These are roller-skates." "Guys, there're wheels!" " It goes on your feet, you know?" " I know." "With these, you can skate whenever you want." "But not around here, there's no pavement." "In the city, you can fly like crazy." "I tell you." "There is a place here." "Barabáš really was a director who got our intentions." "It was important he's a Slovak, he knew the environment." "Any other director, no matter how brilliant they'd be, could not understand and visualize the atmosphere of the story." "The only thing I kind of held against him..." "When we finished the film, A Song About the Gray Pigeon," "I told him we had to do one thing." "The ending had to go." "It was kitschy, it felt very servile." "At the end, the boy is dying and he's calling for his pen." "He gets the pen in one of the stories from a Russian partisan woman." "The pen has a little window in it." "They used to sell those, with a picture of naked ladies or something." "But in this one, there was Kremlin." "Russia." "She told him 'Once you'll come to Moscow." "We'll meet again... '" "And calling for a pen, he's thinking of this one, he sees the picture, and he meets Natasha there." "She's dead, he's dead as well." "And they meet." "That's the ending." "And he shot it in real set." "My idea was a naive, childish drawing of Moscow, supporting the naivety of the vision of meeting Natasha." "When shot so realistically, in a real set, the outcome was totally different." "Maybe that's why Barabáš didn't protest at all." "It was edited, it was cut out." "I'd kept that piece of film for 20 years." "Then I donated it to the Film Institute." "The pen, where's my pen." "It had been talked about a lot, and it was a general feeling, that literature is far ahead of film." "Meaning Slovakian film." "That it is necessary to make a contact with writers, to engage them in Slovakian film production." "Quite a few of us had felt that a film theme and a screenplay should be co-written by the writer and the director." "It should not be just selling a finished product." "That's how I got Dominik Tatarka, who'd had film experience, and Alfonz Bednár, who had just published his book." "It was called The Hours and Minutes." "I kind of lured him into film by giving him promises, telling him it's not much work and he'll live well." "He can keep writing his novels, and it's enough if he writes one screenplay a year." "Well, it was more all about having an easy life." "But then him and Uher had become close, if only because they were born in the same area." "They found a soulmate in each other." "Making The Sun in a Net, they got along perfectly." "And the result, the film..." "I think it really convinced people, even in Prague, including Miloš Forman, who called Uher John the Baptist of the Czechoslovakian New Wave." " Why bother talking?" " You're an asshole." "Nobody." "You are." "And Peo was asking about you." "Any idea why?" "I didn't mean to do that, Fajolo." "It had totally different poetics." "Different to all films ever made in Slovakia until then." "We didn't compare ourselves to Prague film makers." "They had been making films with this kind of a feeling." "But in Slovakia, this was the very first one." "Not mentioning that the film was received even better, because it kind of clashed with the Party authorities." "When first shown to the bosses, Bacílek said not to distribute it." ""You don't think I know what a metaphor is?"" "But he really didn't know." "He just thought he knew." "The whole thing was a metaphor." "Actually an anti-government one." ""And the blind mother, that's the Party who see nothing."" "And on and on, that it can't go into cinemas." "Bela, are we at the pontoon yet?" "I can feel the water." "Yes, mom." "Miro!" "Be careful, the water may be deep." "Don't worry, mom." "I often reproach myself for not being able to help you." "If anything happened..." "Here's a bridge to the pontoon." " Careful, mom." " You have to hold me, Bela." "Are we on water, yet?" "Why isn't it swishing?" "Here's a bench, sit down." " Mom?" " Yes, Bela?" "This is a quiet bay, nothing moves around here." "The water is like a mirror." "We went to Bilak, the chief of the ideological deparment, and again, he proved himself to be an enlightened man." "He said not to worry, Bacílek is an old man and all." "You just need to cut out the part where the cooperators steal wood from the forest." "Of course we did not, it stayed there." "When he actually saw the film, he didn't make a big deal of it." "He just said: "Comrades, you are not to be trusted."" "When stealing from the state, one must not shout." "When we looked at it through other people's eyes, maybe also thanks to Forman and the Czech response, in the whole context of people's opinions, we actually discovered that it's more than we expected." "Let go." "Young by age, old enough to love." "Hello." "Excuse me?" "!" "Compared to what was before, there was one advantage." "We elected our own art council." "Before it was given." "The director general had his council, representatives of the Party, Ministry of Culture, Union, all that." "Mostly, those people had no idea what was going on." "It wasn't a decision-making board, only advisory." "So I heard the voice of the board and we did our own thing." "Where have you been, Fajolo?" "I've been waiting for half an hour." " What's up, superficial?" " Why?" " That's what you are." "I wrote to you, not to Peo." "You're no good, Bela." "I thought you were not, but you actually are a chump." "In that time, I was offered to lead one of the production teams." "It was a common practice that getting into a certain position meant joining the Party." "And I was, as they called it, an independent Bolshevik." "Even before, since the uprising." "So I didn't have a problem with that." "It wasn't just calculation or that." "When they told me I had to join, I said I gladly would." "My pleasure." "So then, I'd done good stuff, I was a member, I lead that group..." "I felt like I had free hands to do whatever." "We were in close contact with Prague." "I myself would go there almost every week," "I would hang out with Daniel Kratochvíl's circle." "They pointed out that we could work with FAMU graduates." "For example Jakubisko, who worked at Laterna Magika." "They said we should bring these to Slovakia." " You, you, you, you." " And a kiss?" " Of course." "One more." " Now you two." " Probably not." "I'm shy." "What?" "Come on." "You?" "Really." "Maybe I don't seem so, but I am shy." "Come." "We go first." " How old are you?" " I want another." "Well... what's up?" " Do something." " Do what?" "See?" "I will marry him." "The plan was to make five films." "But there were eight directors." "Somebody would be out." "That's what we wanted." "But we couldn't say we preferred Jakubisko to Bahna or Medved'." "Or Letrich." "To bring young, unexperienced directors to Slovakia, to let them make high-budget films, while our directors are on hold..." "The management had a problem how to deal with this situation." "Our team played a negative part, but we said it wasn't our fault, the management decided so, you know, Jakubisko's coming, he's going to make this and that." "When we actually got in touch with Jakubisko, we invited him to come up with a theme and film here, that we'd give him the opportunity." "And he did come." "And I think with the very first one, he brought Dohnal with him." "Listen, Juraj, don't you think that Marta's a bit too old?" " She is, and what?" " And you want to marry her?" "Of course." "I'm not gonna marry some thin goose." " Good morning." " Go to see your dad." " You took your time, didn't you?" " Something happened?" " You did!" " What's wrong?" "Are you drunk?" " Want to smell my breath?" "Come... move your hand and let me come in." "To drink up all our booze, right?" "Hey, watch your tone!" "Remember I'm not a little girl." "You sure aren't." "Marta!" "Marta!" "Marta, wait!" "Here, take this." "Robbe-Grillet just happened to be in Bratislava." "He was touring in Central Europe, giving lectures." "He stopped in Prague, did his lectures, and comrades in Prague wanted to have a weekend off." "So they sent him to Bratislava." "I spoke French, so I got him." "I was showing him around the city, of course we talked about literature, and at one moment, at the castle, as we walked out, he said it looked like a film set." "I told him to come make a film." "He asked if there was any filming, I told him we had great studios, that foreign film makers had shown their interest." "He said:"But you'd observe every step I'd make, right?"" "I gave him my word that he could film whatever he wanted to." "My name is Boris, Boris Varissa." "You've seen me around here." "But I've changed." "Probably." "You might not recognize me." "I had a beard, and glasses." "As a mask." "Everybody was hiding, more or less." "Do you remember?" "The streets were closed off, they checked everybody's papers." "One never knew whether they'd make him a suspect." "The general management in Prague actually reproached us for that." "Why with such an amateur director as Robbe-Grillet?" "Why him?" "If you have to co-produce, why not somebody else?" "In Czechoslovakia then, such projects were not common." "It felt a bit like a risky project." "It didn't have any dramatic story." "The biggest display of an absolutely liberal approach was Robbe-Grillet." "He didn't even have a screenplay." "He had some kind of an outline, and the screenplay was written while shooting." "Somebody had to be on the set all the time, watching." "I was there." "And I was responsible for what was done." "Although in general, everybody knew what it's about." "We made an agreement with Robbe-Grillet." "He could film whatever, under one condition." "That he won't offend socialism nor our state's establishment." "He said of course, it's silly to even talk about it." "I said it would be nice if it takes place in Slovakia, to make it's character comprehensible for locals." "And if possible, to involve as many of our artists as possible." "The cameraman was agreed on." "Then they picked actors." "Roner, Mistrík, Turbová." "When we were negotiating the cast and the prices, he said that Trintignant costs what all the others together..." "What we pay for five actors is a half of what he pays or him." "He gave us such numbers..." "Well, the budget was balanced." "Our side paid 1,5 million or so." "For those times a very low price." "Don't shoot." "Wait." "I want to say something." "Those who didn't like the style, the new novel and so on, criticized the films as well." "For example in French, the title is ¼homme qui ment." "The Man Who Lies." "That particular reviewer didn't write the whole title, but used three dots at the end." "Which implies the swear word merde, so it turned out as The Man Who Pisses Me Off." "The whole article read like that." "Like there is a man who pisses the reviewer off." "The film The Royal Chase was a peculiar story." "Producer Sammy Halfon, who worked with Alain Resnais, he did Marienbad, Hiroshima, great films like that," "For which he'd earned great respect, used to get big subventions from the ministry." "These were granted by a man who wrote a short novel." "Sammy Halfon promised him he'd try to make it a film." "Which he actually did." "He got Leterrier to direct it." "He came to Slovakia and made The Royal Chase, a film as insignificant as the novel itself." "They went this way." "One of them is wounded." "Then, Robbe" " Grillet was already working on Eden and After." "It was a project he had been putting together for while," "and as the first co-production worked out well, and in the meantime, he'd discovered Kukura, and Igor Luther proved himself to be a great cameraman..." "Basically the whole production was a guarantee that the next film would be just as successful." "Not to mention that Tunisia got interested in Eden and After." " Girls, hold her hands." " No!" "If she threshes about, slap her few times." "Pull her legs apart." "It wasn't a blockbuster." "Robbe-Grillet didn't make those." "But it played at universities, club cinemas, in the States, all around the world." "We only showed it here, in Czechoslovakia." "The film Eden and After started a chain reaction." "Then, this co-production seemed it would go on forever." "For example Claude Simon, a writer, came with his project." "He wanted to turn his novel Flanders Road into a movie." "It's a famous novel, he even got a Nobel price for it." "Or some kind of award like that." "His main objective to film here was that horses were cheap." "Comrades, protest against this violation of socialist internationalism." "Demand from the General Committees of the Parties   of the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and GDR, that the temporary presence of occupation troops should not paralyze neither Èerník's government, nor the General Comitee chaired by Alexander Dubèek." "Demand immediate reatreat of the occupation armies." "I was at my parents' in Eastern Slovakia." "Father woke me up saying that tanks are going through." "Then one tank got turned over in our village." "They got off the road and turned over." "The tank-driver was asking where he was, and where is the enemy, the Germans." "We turned the TV on." "Ms Mouèková was broadcasting." "She talked of what's happening." "Of course we were puzzled." "Few days later I came to Bratislava, our film The Man Who Lies was supposed to open." "No premiere took place, of course, there was curfew after 8 p.m." "After a while, things calmed down." "I actually just recently heard somebody saying that this was the best time." "Right after." "When Dubèek was still there." "When the old Committee was still working." "While all that chaos enabled certain freedom of speech." "In magazine, in... just everywhere." "The 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia began in the Palace of Congresses in Prague 7." "To be honest, I did not expect such turn." "That the whole stalinism would come back." "Because Jakubisko finished his See You in Hell, Friends." "It was hard to imagine they would let him do it." "But he did it, and everything passed." "Then the screenings started." "Duan Kodaj went first." "After, he told us there's no point trying any evasions." "We were doomed." "I got kicked out of the Party, but still I worked, for a while." "Then one day, I was told by the personnel officer that I'm terminated." "The officer made this face, telling me they'd given me a chance, for 2 years, to make up for all my mistakes." "It didn't happen." "That's it." "Milo Krno was already the chief dramaturg at Koliba." "He still tried to convince me." ""You have to admit that the damage you'd done here is enormous."" "Bullshit like that, right." "Anyway." "With what we'd done, we kind of expected that one day they'll get on us." "I think I can say that the times of normalization were O.K. For me." "I can't imagine my work in film if I would've gotten kicked out." "Because the whole orientation in the following years..." "There was no place for me." "On the other side, the gallery was kind of a shelter." "I could freely travel to Prague, where I joined the group around V. Effenberger." "We would meet at least once a month." "It sounds like blasphemy, but these were my best years." "But it's true that compared to what would've happened had I stayed in film industry..." "Compared to that prospect, this was absolutely fine." "That's probably the main thing." "I think if only the others had it as lucky as I have." "In 1972, Albert Marenèin got fired from Koliba studios." "He worked for the National gallery, with the Prague surrealistic circle, his literary and art works were published abroad and in Samizdat." "He never got back to film, but he still writes about it."