Summer under the Kriváň Mountain

Eugen Mateička / Slovakia / 1943 / Czech Premiere / 16 min.

synopsis

An unusually photogenic ethnographic film about the rhythm of summer work - mowing meadows in Liptov with a scythe.

“In the year of our Lord 1943, we began in the Name of God with mowing in Podkrivánské Meadows on St. Anna” - one of the most consistent “peculiar” Nástup titles depicts “mowing” in the meadows at the base of the Tatra Mountains with a scythe. The film is plein-air, Plickian in its ethnographic optics, although biased towards the working rather than the festive day, and the rhythm of the people of the Podkran region (the village of Hybe, the fictional birthplace of Pach - the Hybe bandit). A similar anthropological tradition would later be developed in Slovak film by Karel Skřipský. An interesting feature is the young Ivan Rajniak in a childhood role.

biography

Eugen Mateíčka (1914–1996)
When the production department of Nástup was established in 1941, the former radio operator, Mateíčka, was one of its first acquisitions. He made less than a dozen films at Nástup. Although after the war he worked briefly as a film correspondent (head of the Film Chronicle), and as a documentary filmmaker on agricultural subjects, he was later weaned off of film, and rededicated himself to editorial work.