Page 168 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 168
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
on how much these Yugoslav movies could be contextualised in view of the
post-socialist tragedy of the country.6 Nevertheless, in between there was a
period, when it seemed that a new urban culture, which transcended the at-
tributes of an exclusivist ethnic identity, was emerging in this multi-cultur-
al Balkan republics. Many cases of films could be found in almost all Yu-
goslav republics that in many respects shared a similar aesthetic codes and
modernist views as some other European films mentioned above. Howev-
er, let me bring up my point by briefly presenting just one film: Sand Cas-
tle (Peščeni grad – 1962) by Boštjan Hladnik, the enfant terrible of the Slo-
venian cinema.
In 1960s the Slovenian cinema made first most recognisable and seri-
ous moves towards a modernist approach in film-making. As recently de-
ceased director of the Slovenian cinematheque Silvan Furlan remarked in
his article for a special issue of the review Ekran, dedicated to the celebra-
tion of the 100th anniversary of the Slovenian film: “[The Slovenian film]
gained importance as the mass culture and as art as well. Why should our
film be anything special in this regard? But it is certainly very special for
our culture and art – it visibly co-created and it still co-creates an image of
ourselves” (Furlan, 2005: p. 42). The period of late modernism, in which a
part of film production in Slovenia went on dutifully screening “national”
myths and canonised literature, brought about also some of the most im-
portant films in Slovenia so far. Boštjan Hladnik contributed quite a big
share of them. The film Peščeni grad maybe is not Boštjan Hladnik at his
best, but still the film very well represents his role in the history of Slove-
nian cinema. Already with his first feature film, Dancing in the Rain (Ples
v dežju – 1961) Hladnik introduced the aesthetics of modernity in the cin-
ema of Slovenia. And he did so very much so that the meaning of the film
remains rather impenetrable and ambiguous for most average viewers. Al-
though the Dancing In the Rain immediately gained high acclaim among
the cultured audiences, it looks like that Hladnik perhaps felt a need to
come closer to less sophisticated moviegoers. The result was in many re-
spects not much less accomplished film, which is in view of a presenta-
tion of an identity problem much more transparent than the first Hladnik’s
film. As in the Sand Castle (which is a sort of a road movie or maybe more
precise: off road movie) there is not much of a story, we just get many frag-
ments, which emit double messages of joy and anxiety. The story of the film
6 In my view, a research along such lines would shed some additional light on many
reasons for fierceness of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans after 1990.
166
on how much these Yugoslav movies could be contextualised in view of the
post-socialist tragedy of the country.6 Nevertheless, in between there was a
period, when it seemed that a new urban culture, which transcended the at-
tributes of an exclusivist ethnic identity, was emerging in this multi-cultur-
al Balkan republics. Many cases of films could be found in almost all Yu-
goslav republics that in many respects shared a similar aesthetic codes and
modernist views as some other European films mentioned above. Howev-
er, let me bring up my point by briefly presenting just one film: Sand Cas-
tle (Peščeni grad – 1962) by Boštjan Hladnik, the enfant terrible of the Slo-
venian cinema.
In 1960s the Slovenian cinema made first most recognisable and seri-
ous moves towards a modernist approach in film-making. As recently de-
ceased director of the Slovenian cinematheque Silvan Furlan remarked in
his article for a special issue of the review Ekran, dedicated to the celebra-
tion of the 100th anniversary of the Slovenian film: “[The Slovenian film]
gained importance as the mass culture and as art as well. Why should our
film be anything special in this regard? But it is certainly very special for
our culture and art – it visibly co-created and it still co-creates an image of
ourselves” (Furlan, 2005: p. 42). The period of late modernism, in which a
part of film production in Slovenia went on dutifully screening “national”
myths and canonised literature, brought about also some of the most im-
portant films in Slovenia so far. Boštjan Hladnik contributed quite a big
share of them. The film Peščeni grad maybe is not Boštjan Hladnik at his
best, but still the film very well represents his role in the history of Slove-
nian cinema. Already with his first feature film, Dancing in the Rain (Ples
v dežju – 1961) Hladnik introduced the aesthetics of modernity in the cin-
ema of Slovenia. And he did so very much so that the meaning of the film
remains rather impenetrable and ambiguous for most average viewers. Al-
though the Dancing In the Rain immediately gained high acclaim among
the cultured audiences, it looks like that Hladnik perhaps felt a need to
come closer to less sophisticated moviegoers. The result was in many re-
spects not much less accomplished film, which is in view of a presenta-
tion of an identity problem much more transparent than the first Hladnik’s
film. As in the Sand Castle (which is a sort of a road movie or maybe more
precise: off road movie) there is not much of a story, we just get many frag-
ments, which emit double messages of joy and anxiety. The story of the film
6 In my view, a research along such lines would shed some additional light on many
reasons for fierceness of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans after 1990.
166
