From the Tatras to the Sea of Azov

Ivan Július Kovačevič / Slovakia / 1942 / Czech Premiere / 63 min.

synopsis

A propaganda film about the struggle of the Slovak army on the eastern front in 1941 and 1942.

The only “feature-length” film produced during the war in Nástup was commissioned by the Ministry of National Defence, and depicts the Slovak army’s activities alongside the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. It is a compilation, editorially supervised by I. J. Kovačevič, based on a theme by Ján Doránský, with the images subsidised by several cameramen. The film was intended to popularize the war campaign, explained to the nation as a heroic struggle against Bolshevism, for the salvation of European civilization. The film was probably played in every cinema in the middle of the war, and quickly put in the vault after the war, as an embarrassing title.

biography

Ivan Július Kovačevič (1909–1979)
The first, most exposed director of the company Nástup, editor of its weekly, the main compiler of the film From the Tatras to the Sea of Azov, after 1945/1948 he basically “burned out” on his collaboration. As early as in the 1930s, he worked as a publicist and propagandist, committed to Slovak film. After the war, he worked as a graphic designer for, among other things, art books of remarkable quality.