Penn
Cinema Studies
Wednesday,
March 5 at 7pm
Contemporary
Slovenian Cinema
Co-presented
by the Communications Program
at Arcadia University and the Slovenian Film Fund
Director
Jan Cvitkovic in person
 With
filmmakers Damjan Kozole (Labor Equals Freedom, Spare Parts),
Jan Cvitkovic (Bread and Milk, Gravehopping), and Igor
Sterk (Gone With the Train,Tuning) who all deal with
specific Slovenian reality and resist the tendency to be regarded
under the more general and often misleading banner of post-Yugoslav
cinema, Slovenian New Wave has had impressive recent festival
success. In light of this
development of an intriguing new cinema, we are pleased to screen
two films by Jan Cvitkovic. An archaeologist, actor, writer
and director, Cvitkovic wrote and played the main role in Idle
Running (V Leru, 1999) by Janez Burger, a film
that announced the new wave in Slovenia. His first feature film,
Bread and Milk (2001) presented at the Venice International
Film Festival in 2001. In
2002, Jan worked on the TV series Death
is Far Away… His 2003 short,
Heart is a Piece of Meat (Srce
je kos mesa) won three awards. Jan
Cvitkovic is one of the most important and provocative filmmakers
in contemporary Slovenian cinema.
Bread
and Milk (Kruh in Mleko)
dir.
Jan Cvitkovic, Slovenia, 2001, 35mm, 68 mins, b/w, Slovenian
w/ English subtitles
 This
is a story about a recovering alcoholic on his first night out
at rehab. When he runs out into an old school friend who claims
to have slept with our hero’s wife years ago, he plunges back
into drinking. An extraordinary study of the effects of alcoholism
on family, described by the director as “the most Slovene film”
ever made, the film centers — ironically — on people the country
left behind.
2001
Winner of Golden Lion of the Future at the Venice International
Film Festival and Luigi de Laurentis Award for Best First Film
followed
by
Gravehopping
(Odgrobadogroba)
dir.
Jan Cvitkovic, Slovenia, 2005, 35mm, 103 mins, color, Slovenian
w/ English subtitles
 The
film revolves around Pero, a professional funeral speaker who
lives with his eccentric family in a small Slovenian town. His
unique gift is to make every funeral that extra bit special,
turning his eulogies into witty personal confessions that bring
the grieving crowd to tears for all the wrong reasons. In a
seemingly innocent setting, the film accumulates force and a
dark abyss looms behind every moment of happiness — and the
other way around. Living on the edge between heaven and earth,
life and death, the characters do not always end up on the side
they would prefer to be. Gravehopping presents itself
in the poetic realm in the best tradition of East European black
humor, and is a film that put Slovenian cinema on the map.
2001
Winner of
Altadis Award for Best New Director, San Sebastian and Cinema
Without Borders Critics Award for the Best Film at the Southeast
European Film Festival.
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