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15 October 2024 Gent (Ghent) (Belgium)
Film Fest Gent Videodroom: Dragon's Return (Drak sa vracia)
Composer-guitarist Oren Ambarchi - Vooruit-Theaterzaal
Program Info: Oren Ambarchi - Dragon's Return (Drak sa vracia)
Dragon's Return is considered a criminally underrated masterpiece of Slovak cinema. In collaboration with the Slovak Film Institute, this spectacular drama will be presented during VIDEODROOM 2024 with a brand new soundtrack written and performed live by avant-garde composer-guitarist Oren Ambarchi.
About the movie When a strange man - nicknamed 'Dragon' - unexpectedly returns to the village that rejected him years earlier, this sets in motion a series of dramatic events that leaves no one unmoved. Set in a time and place that are not clearly defined (is it medieval, contemporary, or some kind of dystopia?), the film is bursting with compelling images.
Dragon's Return interweaves even its quietest scenes with an uneasy sense of almost apocalyptic menace, and the Slovakian mountain landscapes with a hint of sometimes spiritual wonder.
This ancient tragedy, through the cinematography of Vincent Rosinec, who prefers to focus on the texture of objects rather than on dramatic situations, emphasizes the visual and the extra-verbal and prefers black and white symbolism to realism. Director Eduard Grečner approaches his characters and environment in a detached manner, not objectively but consciously distorting and stylizing. In Grečner's interpretation, Dragon's return symbolizes timeless loneliness, where "hell is other people".
Even though the film takes place in bright light, the atmosphere is oppressive and oppressive. Dragon's Return is almost a Slovak western, a hypnotic and meditative fairy tale that can compete with the best work of Béla Tarr, Werner Herzog and Andrej Tarkovsky. Grečner's film adaptation was published in 1967, just before the Soviet invasion put an end to the formal experiments that had flourished in Slovak cinema. Due to the difficult political situation after the Prague Spring, the film was not distributed beyond borders and therefore did not reach the worldwide audience it undoubtedly deserved.
It wasn't until 2015 when Second Run released the film on Blu-ray that Western viewers finally got the chance to see Grečner's unique masterpiece.
"A ballad about love, hate and finding a way out of loneliness. Folklore meets avant-garde in an ancient drama, a story about the reclusive potter Martin, nicknamed the Dragon, who is seen by superstitious villagers as the origin of all evil "They took away his love, home and freedom. Years later, Dragon returns to his hometown to deal with the past, but the divide remains insurmountable." - Rastislav Steranka, Slovak Film Institute
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