We Have Our Film! Images of the Slovak State

An industrial film about the production of (and products made from) artificial fibres in the Svit factory at the foot of the Tatras. Wood as a commodity, and its processing has always been part of the industrial culture of Slovakia. Bielik’s film presents the sophisticated processing of wood or cellulose into a new commodity - artificial fibres and their products. The documentary exists in two versions. The post-war one is complemented/framed by a fictional opening in a fabric shop, where a fashionable lady (Marta Černická) buys a silk scarf from a salesman (Mikuláš Huba), whose “production cycle”, through the motif of a tree on the windowsill, motivates the narrative of the film itself.

As one of the first films about Jánošík - Paľo Bielik dedicated it to folk production and the decoration of Shepherds’ axes. If Disappearing Romance is the first documentary by Paľo Bielik for Nástup, it is an excellent entrée. The filmmaker with the reputation of Janosik begins the film with a Shepherd’s axe and a documentary about its production and decoration. From the film you can feel the respect for the craft, and for the romantic brigand tradition, and on the other hand the awareness of their folklorization or mercantilisation. Therefore, there are bandits, bowls, Shephers’s axes... but also a sense of humour and “encrypted” verbosity.

An authentic “documentary of the heroic struggle of the Slovak nation against German domination”, whose materials were recycled by all of the later films about the Uprising.The first, and for a long time the last, film documenting in a relatively balanced, historically correct, and in a sharp cut, still charged with the energy of the resistance, the events of the Slovak National Uprising. Paľo Bielik and his colleagues (Karol Krška, Jaroslav Plavec, Alexander Sekula, Václav Richter) participated in the SNP themselves. The film is partly edited from authentic materials, supplemented by documentary footage, showing all of the components of the resistance: mainly the army, but also the participation of the population in the uprising, partisan groups..., also the later persecutions: burnt villages and mass graves.

Exemplary social care by the state for Slovak workers in a convalescent home, with a beautiful Slovak backdrop.A social policy of a state that cares (albeit selectively) for its citizens: this is the leitmotif of Bielik’s medical film, For the Health of the Worker. The imposing Czechoslovak building in the functionalist style is presented here as a perfectly functioning machine. The camera peers insightfully into all corners of this fascinating microcosm which, in a few weeks “spits out” from its innards a healed workforce. The backdrop of the High Tatras gives it moral support.

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.

A film about the Slovak-Italian fascist youth group, in body and soul, directed by the late resistance fighter, Paľo Bielik. A short report in the monthly LÚČ by the competent expert on the male world, Paľo Bielik, depicts a day in the youth camp of two friendly fascist organisations (the Hlinka Youth and the Italian Gioventù Italiana del Littorio). In the romantic surroundings of a Tatra-style “retreat”, the boys wake up to the sound of a fanfare, exercise, toughen up, pray, work, wrestle, and learn. “United in prayer, fun, duty, and rest,” they shape their souls and bodies for the needs of their regime.

A portrait of the (current day) University Library in Bratislava as both a historical stand and a generator of Slovak scholarship. A state-forming portrait of the library of Comenius University, which was founded in 1919, but under the Slovak state it was also ‘Slovakised’ in name. The camera follows the historic interior of the library and its rare copies, the cataloguing work of the librarians, and its immediate effect in the social science study room. The priority is obviously the Slovak books (books bound to Slovakia). However, a certain novelty is represented here by a female university student, depicted in the company of “scientific adolescents who will one day represent the cultural elite of the nation”.

A film dedicated to the reconstruction of a country devastated by war, its building enthusiasm, and faith in a better future. The film debut of Ján Kadár, who will move to the Czech Republic in a couple of years, is a kind of visual audit of war damage. It shows a country devastated by the war, Nazi destruction, and the passage of the front through the countryside: burnt villages, bombed-out factories, liquidated infrastructure... In the middle of the film we hear an appeal, and then in the second half we, see the rebuilding of the country, its reconstruction. This genre hybrid film is actually an agitprop, the first building film of Slovak post-war cinema.

Agitka dedicated to the post-war population exchange in the south of Slovakia. Documentary about the Slovak-Hungarian resettlement activity in the south of Slovakia. The film explains - from the Slovak perspective, of course - how the exchange took place, how picturesque it looked, what its “numbers” were, and what its cultural effects were supposed to be. Although it was never an explicit trauma (similar to the German expulsion), Slovak-Hungarian relations, thanks to the ineptitude of later politicians, have still not completely stabilized to this day.

A quasi-hagiographic portrait of the “useful idiot” of Slovak Nazism, Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka. A special medallion dedicated to Vojtech Tukova forms an exceptional spot in the news context. The most prolific Nazi of the Slovak political establishment, and the accelerator of the genocide of Slovak Jews, is presented here as a martyr who prays in silence to the Virgin Mary, and invests in work for the nation. It is a framed narrative where we see Tukova’s hardships and merits in the national cause in retrospect, straightforwardly hagiographically fabricated. The film shows the filmmaking skills of I. J. Kovacevic, and at the same time, the perfidy of contemporary propaganda.

A typical hybrid compilation, projected within the framework of a war magazine: mourning, honours, joy from work, and Drang nach Osten. The magazine contains six pieces of different provenance, each from countries in the Nazi sphere of influence, linked by a Slovak commentary. The Protectorate’s “nationwide” commemoration of Heydrich is followed by two Slovak spots: one on the honouring of “frontline fighters” who were knocked out of the Eastern Front, and the other on the production of wooden houses in Turany. But the most extensive spot is devoted to Nazi war propaganda, the battle for Sevastopol. To lighten things up, the weekly also includes one hilarious spot on the “music of stone” by the Brussels pavers.

The parading of the state, its political elites, and the army at mass rallies to mark the anniversary of statehood. Around Statehood Day (14th March), the Slovak coverage of Nástup used to be more extensive. Either they were a compilation of the national economic achievements of the new state so far, or they were a record of lavish (military) parades, as in the case of the 4th Statehood Day anniversary in 1943. The mass gathering in Bratislava in front of the National Theatre, followed by the military parade in front of the barracks building with the opposite backdrop of the functionalist Nová doba housing estate, had the ambition to present the unity of the nation and the strength of the army, precisely what was already beginning to disintegrate in this period.

The fascist propaganda of one of the weekly newspapers at the end, and its formula: the thief shouts “catch that thief”.In the weekly Nástup from 1944, actually the last year of the war, we see, in addition to the foreign spots, two Slovak reports of the time: a picture of everyday life in Bratislava shortly after the bombing of the Apollo refinery by “Anglo-American terrorists”, and a report from an anti-Bolshevik exhibition. A travelling train exhibition with realistic dioramas staging Soviet terror (so similar to the images of the soon-to-be-revealed Nazi concentration camps) was meant to disgust the nation with Bolshevism, as the liberating Red Army was already at the door...

The adventurous expedition of Paľo Bielik and his companions into the wilderness of the Danube meadow below Bratislava. The cultural film On the Island of Cormorants is the last film by documentary filmmaker Paľo Bielik for the company Nástup. And it’s a promising documentary that already clearly reveals boys’/boyish values, a sense of story, self-irony, and photogeny in capturing natural environments: - typical features of Bielikְ’s directing style. The film depicts the adventurous expedition of the filmmakers to the floodplain forest below Bratislava. And it is in a sense double-coded, because it captures with equal interest the fauna of the Danube basin, and the filmmakers’ “wild game”.

A beautiful Slovak film ride through picturesque Slovakia, by train from Bratislava to the Tatra Mountains. If Plicka once had a train take the audience to Slovakia, to the “promised land”, in the introduction to The Land Sings, Eugen Mateíčka’s short film continues this tradition. On the Locomotive is a film-ride, through which the train-camera introduces us to the beauties of Slovakia from the west, through the tunnels along the Váh River, and on to the magnificent Tatra Mountains. It is one of the most photogenic and beautiful-Slovak films of Nástup.

A film about the bread production process in the modern Nupod mill in Trnava. A short cultural film about bread-making, framed by a verse from the Our Father, expresses quite consistently the everyday “propaganda” content of Slovak statehood: diligence, and faith in divine providence. Otherwise, however, this is a sophisticated, modernist-conceived “production film” that follows the process of bread production, from the harvest, through its processing into flour in the modern Nupod mill near Trnava, to its journey to the Slovak table.

A genealogical documentary about the “great men” of a nation that supposedly “needs to be seen standing up for itself”. This cultural film by I. J. Kovačević is a cinematic counterpart to the traditional patriarchal notion of the great men of the nation (Oomini Illustri), as the creators of History. Here, moreover, the “great story” of Slovak history is being written, so they are all (old) Slovaks! In addition to the national narrative, the film also tells the story of Slovakia’s modernization, albeit out of the context of the newly defunct Czechoslovakia. Despite its nationalistic diction, the film has a remarkable cinematic composition, making it a curiosity of its kind.

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.

Viktor Kubal’s Disney-esque debut about Slovakia’s “salvation” through electrification. As one of Viktor Kubal’s first animated films, it doesn’t deny its American inspiration. It’s a commercial film where the Christmas Santa Claus tradition of gift-giving is linked to the motif of the electrification of Slovakia. Slovakia was a rather rural country in the 1940s, but was quickly modernized by German investment in infrastructure. Nevertheless, most Slovak housewives could only dream of an electric iron or hob.

Spiš Castle, “fairy-tale-like” brought to life in the dream of a child, an indoctrinated Hlinka Guard wolf.Castles and chateaus have always been popular tourist attractions in Slovakia. Orava and Spiš castles, and ruins in the Považie region still attract visitors to romantic Slovakia. Paľo Bielik stages his cultural film about Spiš Castle as a fairy tale, read by an old mother to a boy over a wooden construction set. In the child’s dream, already heavily indoctrinated by the activities of the Hlinka wolves, the boys fight with wooden swords for control of the castle. The fight ends in a truce, and the film’s reference to the dream framework of childhood ‘historiography’.

Post-war cinematic reckoning with People’s Fascism and its representatives.In Slovakia, too, a few accounting titles were created shortly after the war, with the ambition to clearly name and personify war crimes, to punish them, and thereby to accelerate the cleansing of society. They Are Personally Responsible... is a sharply edited “agitational” montage, compiled from wartime weeklies. The film is an absolute indictment of the “Tiso regime”, letting loose, it is not known whether directly or only temporally parallel, during the trials (within the framework of the National People’s Courts) to aggravate the defendants.

The Slovak National Uprising, as the purgatory of a compromised nation in Ján Kadár’s accounting film. The second of Kadár’s two anti-fascist agitations also reveals a mature debutant. In addition to the director, the initiator and co-author of the theme, Ján Kalina, an important figure in the Slovak dramaturgy of early socialist film of the late 1940s, is behind both “edits”. Yet without the Soviet filter, the film shows, also in the form of maps, what the Uprising looked like geopolitically, and who were its main actors and victims. Together with Bielik’s For Freedom, it is the first film account of the SNP, a key event in modern Slovak history.

A production film about the extraction of travertine - Slovak marble, its symbolic meaning, and its use. Exploitation - the extraction of mineral wealth was an important feature of the modernisation of Slovakia in the economic framework of Hitler’s “New Europe”. Paľo Bielik has processed this motif into a sympathetic film about the extraction and cultural use of travertine, an indigenous “Slovakian” rock of specific visual qualities. In a quasi-creative narrative arc, the film presents the process of processing “Slovak marble” from the first drilling, to the impressive Štefánik’s Mound at Bradla.

An industrial film about a Slovak patent - the production of glycerine from sugar beet, with the young František Zvarik in an insightful lead role. The film conveys to the public a fresh Slovak patent: the production of glycerine from sugar beet in the glycerine factory in Leopoldov. However, this is no ordinary “industrial film”: what is new, apart from the modernity of the invention, is its “sexy” dimension. The whole process is accompanied, and introduced, by an attractive young man - a fresh acquisition of the Slovak National Theatre, the operetta actor František Zvarík. The production film thereby becomes - and not for the first time in the portfolio of Nástup - a star vehicle.