Slovenian film cycle in Italy starts with Maja Weiss
We invite you to join us at the first evening of the Cycle of Slovenian Films in Italy, which Kinoatelje is organizing on Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 8:30 p.m. in the House of Film in Gorizia. We are starting with the Italian premiere of the new documentary by Maja Weiss, the first winner of the Darko Bratina award in 1999. The emotional journey through the dark epochs of history is entitled Snatched from the Source - Slovenian Children of Lebensborn and will be screened with Italian subtitles. The film's author, producer Ida Weiss from the production company Bela Film and co-screenwriter Nataša Konc Lorenzutti will be present at the screening.
The film, which will be screened on the Holocaust Remembrance Day, focuses on the Second World War through the lens of four children, the last surviving victims of the Nazi racial experiment. In 1942, around thirty "racially appropriate" Slovenian children were included in the infamous Nazi Lebensborn program, designed by Heinrich Himmler and aimed at expanding the Aryan race. Most of these children were given up for adoption to German couples who were at least ostensibly loyal to the Nazi regime. The protagonists of the film tell today's world, which is in the midst of new wars, in Ukraine, in Africa, in the Middle East: "The biggest victims of every war, on both sides, the attacker and the attacked, are children. Peace is the greatest value."
The film thus not only shows the shocking story between Germany and Slovenia on an individual and collective level, it also tells about stolen children from Ukraine, says Maja Weiss: "The protagonists in the film, regardless of nationality, communicate that forgiveness, compromise, acceptance of differences, solidarity and love, are all important for maintaining peace in a world where there is less and less of it." The coloring of black-and-white photographs and moving images gives the shocking story a special touch, reminding the viewer that war did not just happen once, but is happening here and now, in front of us and our eyes. The special feature of the film is also its technical performance in post-production, as it is the first full-length Slovenian colorized archival documentary film.
In 1999, the first Darko Bratina Award went to Maja Weiss for her film The Road of Brotherhood and Unity. The audience from Gorizia will have the opportunity to see how the director continues unwaveringly to explore repressed and less appreciated questions about identity and history.
A memory of receiving the Darko Bratina award
I am honored that in 1999 I was the first to receive the Darko Bratina award for the feature-length documentary film The Road of Brotherhood and Unity, for a "road movie", a film of roads, with stories located in the republics of the former Yugoslavia; for a film depicting the human devastation of all kinds and proportions that took place in this first war in Europe after 1945.
The Road of Brotherhood and Unity was also the first film of the independent production company Bela Film, which I founded in 1998 together with my sister, producer Ida Weiss. We shot the film with our own hands using a purchased video camera with the money we received from the George Soros fund from New York. The film was rejected by the then Slovenian Film Fund, but it was supported by Television Slovenia. The film was internationally recognized and very successful.
For me, receiving the award in Gorica meant a great honor, because I received it from the hands of Aleš Doktorič. I had the honor of meeting him even before 1999, as he was in charge of Film Video Monitor in Gorica, an important festival where some of my documentaries, which were made even before The Road of Brotherhood and Unity, were shown, including Trieste on the Border (1996).
Aleš Doktorič was an important personality, an intellectual, culturalist, erudite, cross-cultural and inter-national connector, vocal about minorities and marginalized topics, to injustice and truth, critical thinker, film buff, who became an important producer of AV-all overlooked border topics. Curious, flexible, broad - in short, a humanist. An excellent successor to the legacy of Darko Bratina, whom I unfortunately did not meet personally, he died in 1997.
I am honored that my/our new feature film Snatched from the Source - Slovenian Children of Lebensborn will be screened on the anniversary, the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Darko Bratina Award. I am convinced that this film would also deeply touch both of them, both Darko Bratina and Aleš Doktorič, because it actually contains everything that they fought for and strived for in their film, cultural and social work. In the recognition of film as an exceptional expressive means of communication between people, which speaks about society, from society and at the same time affects society back, makes it aware and sensitizes it, in kindness, solidarity and hope, which dies last.
Thanks to both, the work and spirit of Darko Bratina, and the work and spirit of Aleš Doktorič. Thank you to the colleagues of Kinoatelje and good luck on the further path of their important mission. Thank you for translating Snatched from the Source into Italian and for making this shocking Slovenian story of global proportions available to Italian audiences as well.
Maja Weiss
The Cycle of Slovenian Films 2024/25 will come to life
Throughout the cycle, we will continue to offer viewers a varied insight into current as well as restored Slovenian film production. It is produced in cooperation with the Slovenian Film Center, the House of Film and the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad and Around the World, and is part of the official program of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025. With the program, we will also honor the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Darko Bratina award at the Tribute to a Vision festival, which carries a message about the transformative, humanistic and poetic power of film images.
We set about creating the series in the spirit of a landmark retrospective entitled Cinema Sloveno 1946-1981 Slovenian film, when in 1981 Slovenian cinematography was presented to the Italian public for the first time in Gorizia, which until then had only been shown abroad as part of Yugoslav cinema. "Gorizia has become an observatory of Slovenian film and a changing society," said Aleš Doktorič, then president of Kinoatelje, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the event. Let this continue to be a challenge and a call to our cross-border cinephile community.