After the fall of communism, it may have become easier to breathe in Slovakia, but it was more difficult to make films. State funding was drying up, the annual production declining, cinematography was facing a crisis. In the 1990s, Martin Šulík was one of the few directors who managed to make films. And he made good films, such as Tenderness (Neha, 1991), Everything I Like (Všetko čo mám rád, 1992), The Garden (Záhrada, 1995), Orbis Pictus (1997), Landscape (Krajinka, 2000). Thanks to Šulík, important film signals also emanated from Slovakia abroad. Now, the latest film by this key Slovak director of the complex 1990s will receive its première at the Berlin International Film Festival. It is called The Interpreter (Tlmočník) and it views the present with interventions from the deep past associated with the main protagonists portrayed by personalities of European cinema – the Czech director Jiří Menzel and the Austrian actor Peter Simonischek.

If we refer to the difficulties encountered by cinema in the 1990s, subsequently the situation started to develop in a more favourable direction and, after 2009, when the Slovak Audiovisual Fund was established, this trend became more pronounced. In this issue of Film.sk you will read not only about what the previous year achieved within the positive development of Slovak cinema (in particular, domestic films recorded a remarkably high attendance in cinemas), but we will also describe in individual studies last year’s Slovak feature, documentary and animated works. In addition, we include reviews of the new films made last year – The Line (Čiara), Nina and Out.

However, let us return one more time to Martin Šulík who also made documentaries about outstanding filmmakers from the history of Czechoslovak cinema. These filmmakers include the Slovak directors, Dušan Hanák, Elo Havetta and Juraj Jakubisko. All three made their débuts in full-length feature film in the second half, or even the late 1960s, all had the potential to captivate audiences abroad as well, and all were born in 1938, so this year we commemorate their eightieth birthday. The Slovak Film Institute (SFI) will commemorate it also. It is the institution tasked with overseeing the audiovisual heritage and on this occasion, it plans to issue DVDs and Blu-rays. And the SFI itself, the publisher of Film.sk, will celebrate the 55th anniversary of its establishment.

— Daniel Bernát / Editor-in-chief —