SLOVENIAN FILM FESTIVAL

LOS ANGELES -- The first Slovenian Film Festival--SLOVENIA BEGS TO DIFFER--is now taking place at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater, under the auspices of UCLA FiLm & Television Archive, The South East European Film Festival, and the Slovenian Film Center.
 
As co-curator Vera Mijojlic said, "Among the modern countries that make up the former Yugoslavia, the Republic of Slovenia represents an exceptional national culture and contributor to world cinema. As a result of its unique geography, situated adjacent to Italy and Austria, Slovenia (population two million) has historically been the Yugoslav entity most receptive of Western influence and thus, among the most cosmopolitan of its counterparts. Indeed, Slovenia, always the rebel, was the first to question free market effects on its society, even as it was the first Yugoslav breakaway republic to integrate them after independence in 1991.

"In its cinema, Slovenia also 'begged to differ,' offering lyrical, achingly poetic and free-spirited stories of misfits, rather than the broad, polemical tableaux that characterized so much Eastern bloc cinema. Rarely have such introverted characters and eccentric stories conveyed a zeitgeist and a national character with such subtlety and restraint, nor observed geopolitics with such oblique precision.
"This series offers a selection of some of the most influential, revealing and formally fascinating Slovenian films from mid-century forward, including several from the country's recent output."

Among the Festival highlights are: VALLEY OF PEACE, VESNA, DANCING IN THE RAIN, RAFT OF THE MEDUSA and GRAVEHOPPING.

For further information visit cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-09-09/slovenia-begs-to-differ.