Slovakia in the Sixties - (By Mira & Antonin J. Liehm - 1977) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/16_Slovakia_in_the

After the success of "Sunshine in a Net", Slovak film did not keep up with Prague. Only Uher fulfilled the hopes he had raised, creating in "The Organ" ("Organ" - 1965), a baroque metaphor about life and art against the backdrop of Slovak fascism during World War Two. Uher's less successful attempt to make a screen version of one of the authentic works of Slovak surrealism, Dominik Tatarka's novel, "The Miraculous Virgin" ("Panna zazracnica" - 1966) is typical of the efforts to find a source for a genuine Slovak style.
With his by then usual scriptwriter, Alfonz Bednar, Uher had unearthed it in "Three Daughters" ("Tri dcery" - 1968), a Learian ballad about an old peasant who had put his daughters in a convent in order to avoid having to provide dowries for them, and then, dispossessed as a result of collectivization, sought help from them after the convents had disbanded. The poetically realistic metaphor once again gave way to the surreal metaphor in "Genius" ("Genius" - 1969), which shows the Devil weeping over the fate of Man - Devil and Man have traded places. To maintain their ancient role, the devils set out to convert man to love and goodness so that he might once again be accessible to corruption.
Uher's peers, Peter Solan, Eduard Grecner, Martin Holly (b. 1931), and the somewhat older Stanislav Barabas, formed the vanguard of Slovak film of this period. The older generation of directors (Bielik, Bahna, Andrej Lettrich, Jozef Medved, Jan Lacko, and others) was capable of ensuring the industrial running of the Koliba studios in Brataslava, but was unsuccessful in wrenching themselves away from provincial standards. But even among the younger generation, many failed to find the means to achieve a radical modernization of language and style: Eduard Grecner did not succeed in "Nylon Moon" ("Nylonovy mesiac" - 1965); Sloan vainly sought his own approach to portraying the psychological makeup of his contemporaries in "Before Tonight Is Over" ("Kym sa skonci tato noc" - 1966), as did Barabas, who strove for a new existential dimension in his "Knell for the Barefooted" ("Zvony pre bosych" - 1965). Sloan, in "The Case of Barnabas Kos" ("Pripad Barnabas Kos" - 1964), and Barabas, in "Tango for a Bear" ("Tango pre medveda" - 1966) certainly did not find a compatible genre in political satire. Then, in 1967 they began to make original films for television. "The Gentle Creature" ("Nezna" - 1967) meant the beginning of Barabas's international career as an interpreter of the work of Dostoyevsky. As for Sloan, he directed a penetrating view of the fifties, the medium length "And Behave Yourself" ("A sekat dobrotu" - 1968). Martin Holly too achieved his greatest success in Leonid Andreyev's ballad "Seven Hanged Men" ("Sedm obesenych - 1968), also originally intended for TV.
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