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For decades it was a subset of the much larger Yugoslavian cinema industry, so it can only be regarded as being totally autonomous from the eighties onwards. Instead of a history of the different genres and opuses, it might make more sense to discuss individual films that placed Slovenian cinematography in a diachronous and fragmented cultural context between the cultural and commercial film. For about forty years, it has been based on continuous tensions between socialist ideology and modern European culture on one hand and a dissident-like attitude towards the repressive political system and aesthetic uniformity on the other. It could be said that Slovenian film production has often been in the shadows of literature and theatre production, which were seen as the traditional cornerstones of national identity. Therefore it is not surprising that there are many films based on literary works and that their aesthetics have been under the strong influence of the theatre.

The Early Years

At the beginning of thirties, towards the end of the silent film era, there wasn't a cinematographic network in Slovenia. Therefore, the movies of that period all came about through the initiative of private individuals. Short documentaries, which usually followed the pattern of Lumiere's silent film, were the vogue. The same could also be said for the first full-length movies of that time called In the Realm of the Goldenhorn) by Janko Ravnik and The Slopes of Triglav by Ferdo Delak, both produced in 1931. Those movies were documentary dramas and focused more on the photography than on the narrative structure or camera movements. They both centre on a group of climbers about to climb Slovenia's highest mountain Triglav, which plays an important role in national mythology.

Reflections of War

Nationalist themes also prevailed in the first movies after the Second World War, when films had strong revolutionary and propaganda characteristics. During the socialist period, which lasted for next forty years - until the decay of Yugoslavia, movie production was almost entirely subsidized by the state and for a long time also controlled and regulated by it.
This was also reflected in the selection of topics, most noticeably in the early years after the war, when movies were entirely dedicated to the national liberation struggle during the Second World War.
The first movie of that period, which was also the first feature film with sound; On Our Own Land in 1948 established the "partisan film" as a sub-genre of the war film.
The director of the film, France Štiglic, was the most prolific producer of feature films in Slovenia. His most famous works that were centred on war themes are Trieste, Don't Cry, Peter and Dolina miru The Valley of Peace, for which a black American John Kitzmiller won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival.
Different thematic approaches were taken towards partisan films. The socialist realistic aesthetic was not felt as much in Slovenian films as it was in other socialist states. There were no black or white portrayals or epic spectacles in Slovenian films. Right from the beginning, it tried to escape from naïve idealizations and demagogic simplifications of the national liberation fight to more specific themes such as the destiny of concentration camp internees, dissidents and Jews.
The role of the collective struggle was soon replaced by individual destinies, propaganda was replaced by more existential themes. One such film from the early sixties is Action, in which the political liberation action is more about existential quandary, full of doubt, weakness and the melancholy of the individuals rather than the homogenous collective thing. The movie The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud takes the viewer even further - the main character lives in the cleft between the real and virtual world of his hallucinations.
Later the intimate experiences of individuals were often used to criticize the war and the revolution, which is probably most clearly seen in the movie Farewell Until the Next War, which was made in the early eighties.

Comedy, literature and a Brave Young Boy

During the fifties, Slovenian films developed the main characteristics that defined them during the decades that followed. Besides the war and post-war dramas that still prevailed, there were also comedies and movies based on works of literature. Children's movies and bourgeois dramas were also relatively frequent genres.
Even though it was still the era of the classical partisan film, it soon became clear that audiences were demanding films with more contemporary themes.
The first youth comedy Vesna, a pleasant story of three youngsters falling in love, also became the first real hit movie. It brought more people to the cinema that any Slovenian film had done before (approx. 100,000) and its Czech director, František Čap, also produced the sequel, Don't Whisper.
Then the time has come to translate the national literature classics into the film language. The reasons, apart from the country's rich cultural tradition, was also the lack of original scripts and the aping of a worldwide trend. Another reason for taking stories from Slovenian books was as a way out from beneath the political dictates of the time into the critical position towards uniformity and idealistic comprehension, something that already existed in recognized literature. Parvenus is a good example of that and was the first movie made that was based upon a literary work. While it focuses on Slovenia's bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 20th century, it had strong indirect implications for the time in which it was made - the fifties.
Some of these films accurately followed the original story: Blossoms in Autumn, Idealist and the Tenth Brother, which are all works based on three of Slovenia's most recognized classics (in this case Ivan Tavčar, Ivan Cankar and Josip Jurčič).
However, most of the players and directors interpreted literary works more liberally. Probably the most unconventional screen adaptation of a classic Slovenian novel is the movie On the Hill of Desire. The director Vojko Duletič applied specific aesthetic forms such as replacing the words with silent images, freezing and holding images, repeating gestures and actions, etc. and thus gave the film a distinctive authorial note.
Literary works also had a strong influence on children's films. From about a dozen produced, six were based upon works of literature. The three movies based upon the alpine tales by Josip Vandot undoubtedly deserve special mention. The legendary movies - Kekec, Good Luck Kekec and Kekčeve ukane Kekec's Tricks - had a huge following and have been screened on all five continents. In contrast to most screen adaptations, this film created huge interest in the books and after the premiere of Kekec more books about the brave boy were published than ever before.

Flying in the Face of Authority

Directors Boštjan Hladnik and then Matjaž Klopčič, introduced modernism to the Slovenian film industry in the sixties. They not only brought a more authorial approach to their films but also connected them with contemporary European genres. Hladnik's tragic expressionist drama, Dance in the Rain, was the herald of this new period. After that he made The Castle of Sand in this new-wave manner. Five years later he surprised audiences with an artistic pop comedy about the sexual revolution called The Shout of the Sun. His films were often censored due to their freethinking, immorality and promiscuity. Masquerade is probably the most notable example of this and the movie was banned for a long time. Klopčič, the other modernist, asserted himself with refined aesthetics and art in the movies On the Run) and On Wings of Paper.
With the sixties came a wave of films that were focused on social criticism. While the movie The Feast expressed this through the nostalgia of the wartime that had passed away, The Minute for Murder showed it through the obscenity of post-war power. The criticism became more obvious in the movies Don't Come Back the Same Way and Toughs from the Castle, where despair defined the individuals.
Pulling down the taboos of the socio-political reality continued into the seventies with the arrival of the Serbian director Živojin Pavlović, who brought the so-called 'black wave' to Slovenian film. The most notable film of this era, which also won the best film award at the Pula film festival, was Red Spikes, which clearly showed the ideological primitivism of forced collectivization and its brutal and cruel consequences.

From Popularity to Crisis

The seventies were a period in which the filming of literary works became widespread. These were mainly adaptations of the classics from Slovenian literature. There were, however, two noteworthy exceptions, one based on a children's book and another on a contemporary novel. Hang On, Doggy, a children's comedy about the restrictions of life in urban surroundings, was very popular. Real Pests, a farcical comedy set in a suburban environment, was released at around the same time and went on to become one of biggest hits.
The next decade brought very few hits to the cinema, with some notable exceptions like the grotesque fantasy-comedy about the struggle for the power called Butnskala (Bumpstone) made by Franci Slak. While in this movie the terror of totalitarianism was still allegorical, it became much more concrete in the movie The Felons. It was set in the early fifties, as the former Yugoslavia turned its back on the Soviets causing the "informbiro" crisis, and it demonstrates the absurdity and paranoia generated by the crisis - in this instance by the Soviet informers and sympathisers. The adaptation of people to the changing social and political circumstances in fifties was the focus of many other movies in the eighties including Red Boogie by Karpo Godina.
Slak and Godina became recognized for their unconventional film expression. Godina, with an ironically nostalgic narrative about an avant-garde movement, called The Raft of Medusa, which some critics consider to be one of Yugoslavia's best movies and Slak with a drama centred on juvenile forlornness The Time of the Crisis. The main character in this films personalizes the crisis that actually confronted Slovenian film production in the eighties and clearly shows its alienation from the audience.
Shortly before Slovenia's inde-pendence its main production company, Viba film, was closed down. In its thirty years of existence it produced more than ninety films. However, there were still some small-scale producers who had been operating since the seventies and many more who started in the eighties. Then along came the last film made in the socialist era, Grandma Goes South. It was also the sole hit from the early nineties and drew huge crowds to the cinema.

Contemporary Film

The alienation of Slovenian film continued until the middle of the nineties and it seemed that audiences had totally forgotten about domestic movies. Then Outsider was released in 1996 and the nostalgic drama about life's conflicts set around the punk subculture of the eighties became the biggest hit for twenty years. It won two international awards - the Bronze Palm in Valencia and the best male actor in Cairo - as well as the Audience Award in Portorož and influenced many subsequent movies. It presented the traumatic and tragic story in a very light, attractive and dynamic way, something that seemed to be missing in previous films and that became characteristic of other hit movies afterwards - Stereotip (Stereotype) and Porno film.
There have been many films made on very low budgets in the past decade, the most notable amongst them are two award-winning movies with specific black and white aesthetics; Idle Running and Bread and Milk. The latter, made by Jan Cvitkovič, which outlines the problematic psychological situation confronting a family living on the bottom rung of the social ladder, developed a very high profile. It won the Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival; the most prestigious prize ever won by a Slovenian film.
Low-budget movies arrived along with digital technology. The most successful of them, The Last Supper, portrayed two marginalized lunatics unable to adjust to society. Marginal and social themes are otherwise well represented in contemporary Slovenian films, especially recently. Two examples are this year's melancholic drama about resigned lives, The Suburb as well as the popular Cheese and Jam, which highlights the ambivalence shown towards ex-Yugoslavian citizens. Its director and leading man, Branko Ðurić, also had a role in another international hit, No Man's Land, which was a part-Slovenian production. Amongst many other awards, it won an Oscar for the best foreign film in 2002 and the award for best screenplay at the Cannes festival.
A popular title from 2008 Rooster's Breakfast was a huge success for many reasons - at least two have a name. It's Severina, the notorious Croatian pop star, who made an appearance there and Feri Lainšček, a best-selling author with a couple of films owing to his books. Moreover, one of them called Shanghai is currently being shot in East Slovenia. Roosters' Breakfast topped the box office for two years, until a Going Our Way hit the theatres last year to become the most viewed Slovenian film ever. This adolescent comedy sets the story back to where Slovenian film legends are born: to the iconic Alpine world - the realm of Kekec and Goldenhorn.