2014: the Year of 38

In 2014, very nearly as many viewers came to see the full-length documentary 38 about hockey player Pavol Demitra as watched all the premièred Slovak films in 2013. From the preliminary total results, the share of domestic films in the total attendance is almost 6 per cent, a record number of 26 films were made and the gross box office takings should exceed EUR 20 million for the first time. Hence, we could call 2014 a year of records.

In 2013 we were pleased about the success of The Candidate (Kandidát) which managed to rank seventh in the list of top domestic films over the era of independent Slovakia with 80,234 viewers, while last year the “old” record of Dušan Hanák’s documentary Paper Heads (Papierové hlavy) was broken, as it was the best attended domestic documentary over the era of independence since 1996, with 17,574 viewers. First Ladislav Kaboš’s film All My Children (Všetky moje deti), premièred on 13 February 2014, was seen by over 22,000 viewers in ten weeks, and Daniel Dangl’s and Lukáš Zednikovič’s full-length début 38 boosted this record up into the category of dreams. By the end of 2014 it had been viewed by 113,930 people, thus the film ranked fifth in the list of top films in the era of independence, only two thousand viewers behind Soul at Peace (Pokoj v duši).

With regard to production, 2014 was the most prolific in the history of Slovakia with 26 full- length Slovak and co-production films (of these only 6 were minority co-productions). And the number of premières was only one fewer than the record number achieved in the year before. Twenty-two full-length films were premièred in cinemas – 10 feature films (of these 3 minority co-productions) and 12 documentaries. The fact that three-quarters of the premièred documentaries were débuts is gratifying. In addition, four short films – Tiger Fight (Tanec tigra) by director Martin Repka, Nina (Nina) by Veronika Obertová and Michaela Čopíková, Fongopolis (Fongopolis) by Joanna Kożuch and The Story of a Tornado (Ako vzniká tornádo) by Veronika Kocourková – were screened prior to full-length films.

In 2012, all the premièred domestic films were seen by only 90,830 viewers, a year later this figure had already increased to 160,151 viewers and last year it even reached 232,567, which meant a year-on-year increase of 45.22 per cent. The audiences’ confidence in domestic productions appears to be slowly recovering. The average attendance per screening of a 100 per cent Slovak film or majority co-production increased to 41.56 viewers, which is almost twice as many as in 2012 (21.86 viewers). The average attendance per screening of minority co-productions also increased year-on-year from 17.80 to 20.14 viewers. The documentaries 38 (54.72 viewers), All My Children (54.42) and The Lyricist (Lyrik, 53.57) achieved the largest average attendance per performance. As for feature films, the amateur film Socialist Zombie Massacre (Socialistický Zombi Mord) achieved the highest average attendance per performance (39.51 viewers).

The average admission fee per domestic film was EUR 4.28 which is 1 cent less than in 2013.

The documentary 38 referred to above was
the most successful domestic film of 2014, with 113,930 viewers. The fairy-tale Love in Your Soul (Láska na vlásku) by Mariana Čengel Solčanská (45,091 viewers) and another documentary All My Children by Ladislav Kaboš (25,523 viewers) also succeeded in crossing the 10,000 viewer threshold. Fair Play was the most attended minority co-production with 7,300 viewers.

Miro Ulman
PHOTO: 38, Itafilm