Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Join co-director Matevž Jerman for a brief and imperfect history of artists' film in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia.
Between 2013 and 2023, the Slovenian Cinematheque preserved and digitized 179 short films made in the period of socialism (1945-1991) but mostly outside the state production system. More than a dozen outrageously underrecognised filmmakers are highlighted in Jerman and Meden’s warp-speed survey, an important, innovative part of the Slovenian film heritage, visible again for the first time after decades.
Making use of multiscreen juxtapositions, energetic editing and a thunderous electro soundtrack, the film makes visible a vast, inexhaustibly rich swath of adventurous (so-called “amateur”) moving-image creativity in a compact 98 minutes. The production of Alpe-Adria Underground! has radically accelerated efforts to preserve, digitise and restore this segment of Slovenian cinema which you can further explore in a programme of shorts selected by co-director Jurij Meden (Slovenian Cinemateque).
One in a series of events celebrating the 10th anniversary of BEEF collective, this screening is co-curated with Niyaz Saghari as part of Other Ways of Seeing, with support from BFI Awarding Funds from National Lottery.
With thanks to the support of the Embassy of Slovenia. Supported by the Cultural Fund—which promotes Slovenian culture internationally and is administered by the Slovenian Embassy in London on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovenia.
