Here’s a few quick portraits from opening night.

Hard at work looking after guests and looking great, as ever, Director of Guest Relations Natalia Klenovska

Festival videographer Daniel Dluhý is a keen analogue photographer with over twenty vintage cameras including medium format which he uses to create Ansel Adams like black and white prints of his native Kezmarok.

This happy gentleman has visited four film festivals this year. The life of Reilly.

Well-dressed festival director and producer Tomas Klenovsky opens another wonderful year of Cinematik.

VSMU lecturer (aesthetics of film) Dr. Juraj Oniščenko is the longtime Director of Protocol at Cinematik.

Guests Dominik and Frederique in front of the 2022 Cinematik banner in Dom Umenie. Dominik distributes films in Slovakia and Czech Republic, while Frederique dances in a Slovak folk dance ensemble when not teaching or enjoying cinema.

Slovak film director Juraj Lehotský is finishing a new film Plastic Symphony about materialism and sacrifice. His last feature Nina (2017) is about divorce from a child’s perspective.

The ever cheerful bar staff at the Cinematik night bar pulling delicious beers on tap

Every Who Down in Whoville Liked Christmas a lot… But the Grinch,Who lived just north of Whoville, Did NOT!…. He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Whos, Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown, At the warm lighted windows below in their town. For he knew every Who down in Whoville beneath, Was busy now, hanging a mistletoe wreath. “And they’re hanging their stockings!” he snarled with a sneer, Then the Grinch said, “Giddap!” And the sleigh started down, Toward the homes where the Whos Lay asnooze in their town. All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air. All the Whos were all dreaming sweet dreams without care.

After dinner last night, I took our dog Thor for a walk up the mountain, and stared down at Whoville. Here is Whoville at night on Christmas Eve.

Of course, the Whos tonight had already had their presents and their roast beast so there was nothing to be done for Grinches except plan for another year.

True. The scheme is as simple as this:

Admit a country in EU and open borders. Buy the profitable businesses there far below their value. Absorb the workforce from that country into Old Europe to the degree that 80-90% of young able-minded and/or bodied men and women (who usually have a work ethic and motivation far above their “Old European” counterparts) leave their homeland. “Elect” the traitors you want as a government using simple political technologies under the rule of US/EU embassies. And finally, turn this Nation/Country into a territory inhabited by feeble old native geezers, and gangs of predatory gypsy/migrant/homegrown psychopaths.

From my time in Slovakia, Austria, France and the UK, I can attest first-hand this is how it happens. Canada, my birth place, certainly suffers from this phenomenon. Many of our stars are poached to the United States and at the same time, due to the US-Canada Free Trade agreement Canada is not free to protect its own cultural industries. It’s been a slow spinning vortex into US culture, to the point where the cultural differences between most of the Canadian provinces with one another and with their neighbours to the south is more like the difference between individual US states. Has Canada reached the point of no return?

It’s a difficult question and one with complex answers.⁵

The same kind of self-annihilation is what is planned for Europe.

This is not to say, entrepreneurs and citizens cannot work against this diabolically designed construction to hollow out nation states. I’ve worked hard to offer great opportunities in Slovakia to young Slovak programmers and designers, and had some success in helping them stay home and have families here. But the system does work like above and some of my past colleagues have indeed left Slovakia behind.

We must hold Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece even illogical Poland against these designs for bland strip-malling of Europe and our individual cultural identities.⁶

Photo by Xandro Vandewalle via Unsplash.

Love poster Jakub Kroner

Here we have three typical student girls living in the main dormitories at Mlynskina Dolina. They sneak boys in and out of their rooms and dream of having punky guys turn up with pear spirits in their underpants. After drinking the bottle straight, some of them have sex with the said punky guys. The next week Sandra cries that Tomas doesn’t call her anymore. So far so good. The same maudlin story which French étudiantes might live through, albeit with better rooms and better liquor.

Meanwhile one of them Veronika, the cutest, is flunking out of her Management courses (which are supposed to be at the Economics University, target of some well earned and pointed jokes about the empty headed and pretty girls who attend that institution – but then Veronika’s exam turns out to be Comenius University which has no particular problem with its management program). Apparently one of her classmates gets straight A’s by blowing the professor in the afternoon.

All of this is just fine if a little depressing. Not the best image of Slovakia but perhaps something in common with grim reality.

Michal Nemtuda, Jakub Gogal and Samuel Spisak
smoke a bong in vile apartment

Where we go downhill is with the guys. Our twenty two year old protagonists Mato and Tomas are best friends from childhood. When they are not circulating among the city’s brothels or trashing Bratislava’s nightclubs, they have a little hobby nicking cars for Boris. Boris is a great guy. If you don’t bring him the car he orders he drills a hole in your hand. As Mato and Tomas are very good at what they do, they don’t have problems with Boris.

Dusan Cinkota as Boris Love

Our two guys swear and bitch and have contests to see who can steal the most gear from parked cars in a lot. Then they smoke up or drink beer. They never clean their vile apartment.

The problem with Lóve becomes apparent. These empty-headed car thieves without morals are put up on the big screen as almost our only image of youth. The heavy advertising campaign meant that as large a young film public as exists saw Mato, Veronika, Tomas and Sandra as their big screen counterparts. While serial killer Jason Bourne is hardly the ideal image, international espionage beats petty larceny and is at least far enough removed from life as to not be aspirational.

Jakub Kroner, we need better images of ourselves. There’s enough petty toughs and trashy floozies in Bratislava without glamorising them at the center of the few films we have.

While Kroner’s script meanders at points (he could use some tighter script editing), despite the best efforts of cinematographer Mario Ondris and editor Otakar Senovsky, there are some pretty moments, particularly at the top of one of the buildings of Bratislava with Mato and Veronika and even the car chase.

Still it’s not all blackness.

Kristina Svarovska film Love Bratislava

Mato and Veronika fall in love and Mato starts to aspire to something better and cleaner. When Veronika is kicked out of her exam he gets caught out in his lie of working reception at the Sheraton. Mato turns up and pays the real concierge €400 for his jacket. The misunderstandings between Mato, a woman with a lapdog, the manager and the original concierge verge on classic comedy. A pity we didn’t have more of this dark comedy.

Love Jakub Kroner Bratislava car chase in the rain Apollo Bridge

Michal Nemtuda as Mato carries his role quite well. He’s no Vincent Cassel (who ironically enough started in a similar role in La Haine) but avoids most of the melodramatic bearpits the script puts in his path. As Veronika, Kristina Svarinská would be the revelation among the actors: she’s beautiful and compellingly intense. Abandoned by her mother at birth, growing up in an orphanage, somehow it seems unlikely Veronika would come through so unscarred, but if producers can get away with overly glamourous actresses in Hollywood why not Bratislava?

Though Samuel Spisák acts more of a caricature than a character as film’s happy go lucky drug dealer, Spisák does not lack charisma. He might shine in the right title role. Ironically and tragically enough the very talented Dusan Cinkota who shines in the role of tough guy Boris is in real life prison for eight years for drug use (pervitin). Cinkota lost his appeal in December 2012 against the case from 2007.

Still I’m wondering why we couldn’t have seen one of the many successful students whom I know with some progress made in life and without a prison term.

These hard working young people could open a restaurant or start a clothing store or sell cars (and not steal them). I know people with complicated love lives doing all of the above. I hope Jakub Kroner makes some new friends before he makes his next film and gives us something to aspire to, something to admire about ourselves on those rare occasions we get to see ourselves in the cinematic mirror.

Perhaps I was just inured to the slightly disappointing loudspeakers of Nova Scena and the strange jumps in the lights didn’t bother me so much.

It probably also has to do with a greater chemistry between Romeo (Arthur Abrams) and Juliet (Natalya Némethová). It’s not to say that Némethová outdanced the always stunning Katarina Kosikova. But she did dance Juliet with as much passion.

See for yourself:

dance of the Patriarchs

Paris Juliet mother

mercutio dance

mercutio surrounded by capulets

Mercutio vs Tybalt

mercutio dies by romeo

dead mercutio

paris attacks romeo

duo romeo juliet

lift romeo juliet

Juliet Lady Capulet

juliet ordered to marry paris

romeo juliet second duet 2

romeo juliet second duet

arthur abrams natalya

Romeo finds Juliet in coma

Lady Capulet grieves Juliet

Mario Radacovsky curtain call

Why should banks operate on other rules than small businesses? If at Foliovision, I invest our time and money badly no one is coming to rescue us. Despite our real contribution to the Slovak economy as a genuine exporter, we live by market rules.

Banks apparently live by different rules. When they crank risk up and make bad investments, the politicians in their pockets ride to the rescue with packages which can make up to 10% of GDP. The money the politicians are giving away to the banks are the taxes small successful companies like us pay.

x The whole scheme resembles a casino operating on the following principle: the players who win are allowed to take away their winnings. Well and good. But when they lose, they are allowed to run up an unlimited tab. When the tab has gone up too high and they can’t even pay for their meals and drinks, the tab is reset. The money they squirreled away at home when on a winning streak doesn’t get touched. They keep their houses.

Any idiot could win under such circumstances. Why are these derivatives traders are considered “masters of the universe”? There were other words for such parasites in past centuries. Let’s start with Highwaymen.

The EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility) is an obligation which I do not want to take on for myself or for the next generations. It’s clear Greece is going belly up: they have not tightened their belts to the extent required for further support. Let Greece resolve its own issues. As a major tourist resort with a mild climate, Greeks are unlikely to starve or freeze to death.

On the other hand, a Greek default would cost Italian, French and German banks a lot of money. Good. Let them be more careful with their investments going forward.

Like Robert Sulik, I’m not anti-Euro.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the euro only causes problems, why doesn’t Slovakia’s government just pull the country out of the euro zone?

Sulik: I don’t see the euro as the problem. It’s a good project. Everyone involved can benefit from it — but only if they stick to the ground rules. And that’s exactly what we’re demanding.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which ground rules should we be following?

Sulik: We have to observe three points: First, we have to strictly adhere to the existing rules, such as not being liable for others’ debts, just as it’s spelled out in Article 125 of the Lisbon Treaty. Second, we have to let Greece go bankrupt and have the banks involved in the debt-restructuring. The creditors will have to relinquish 50 to perhaps 70 percent of their claims. So far, the agreements on that have been a joke. Third, we have to be adamant about cost-cutting and manage budgets in a responsible way.

If the banks go down, people will lose their savings is another sword held over European voters necks. Nonsense. Nearly all countries have depositer insurance. If a bank cracks, the depositors will get their money. Shareholders and management may not. Next time, perhaps they will be more careful.

We live in a climate of fiscal restraint in Slovakia. It seems to be working as we are a growth economy. Time for other Europeans to catch up with Slovakia and China.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, banks could run into significant problems should they be forced to write down billions in sovereign bond holdings.

Sulik: So what? They took on too much risk. That one might go broke as a consequence of bad decisions is just part of the market economy. Of course, states have to protect the savings of their populations. But that’s much cheaper than bailing banks out. And that, in turn, is much cheaper than bailing entire states out.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does one of your reasons for not wanting to help Greece have to do with the fact that Slovakia itself is one of the poorest countries in the EU?

Sulik: A few years back, we survived an economic crisis. With great effort and tough reforms, we put it behind us. Today, Slovakia has the lowest average salaries in the euro zone. How am I supposed to explain to people that they are going to have to pay a higher value-added tax (VAT) so that Greeks can get pensions three times as high as the ones in Slovakia?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What can the Greeks learn from the reforms carried out in Slovakia?

Sulik: They have to make cuts in the state apparatus. The Slovaks could also give them a few good ideas about the tax system. We have a flat tax when it comes to income taxes. Our tax system is simple and clear.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: One last time: Do you honestly believe the euro has any future at all?

Sulik: I believe the euro has a future. But only if the rules are followed.

Yesterday I was speaking with a highly placed Greek political figure. I commiserated with him about the conditions of the loans: selling off most of the national assets to the banks and international financiers. He laughed charmingly and looked me in the eyes.

“Why should we be worried? What has been privatized can be renationalised after a change of government. What belongs to the Greeks remains with the Greeks. We will never be made slaves in our own land.”

At last the cynical bankers have met a match in cynical Greeks. One must not only beware of Greeks bearing gifts. One must be careful of Greeks accepting gifts.

It’s very sad to watch humanity tumble down the path to revolution and ruin and war again. The right to skim the cream from the economy with little or no contribution to the collective well being did not work out very well for the Ancien Regime in France in 1789. Men, women and children were pulled from their houses and beheaded to put an end to misuse of privilege.

When the world banking system is destroyed, the ill gotten gains and privileges of our current generation of politicians and bankers will avail their children very little. We are heading to a global reset. Hopefully, a minimum fo blood will be spilt. But if we are not careful, the inequal redistribution of wealth will lead to an endless world war.

How foolish the greedy can be.

Little did I know just 18 hours later, the Euro was to fall under its watchful walls. Despite, Bratislava’s castle’s air of history, the castle was in ruins for over a hundred years in Pressburg before the Slovaks rebuilt it in Bratislava.

I’m still astonished that Radicova foolishly linked her government AGAIN (this is about time number five) to a vote in Parliament. While she has been a very good prime minister, this death wish in the form of votes of confidence is an absurd game of Russian roulette.

Well now we’ll have an election. Hopefully the bailout package will still not pass. This EU becomes troublesome: a plaything of the international banks, like Congress in the United States. The majority of the European population is against these unlimited bailouts.

slovak beer

miska and peter