Alpe-Adria Underground!

by Matevž Jerman and Jurij Meden

Ali je bilo kaj avantgardnega?, 2024, documentary, digital DCP, 1,85:1, 24, c + bw, 98 min
Finished

Between 2013 and 2023, Slovenian Cinematheque preserved and digitized 179 short films created on a tiny stretch of land between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea in the period of socialism (1945-1991), but mostly outside the prevailing state production. Today, we belatedly recognize these films as experimental and as an important, innovative part of the Slovenian film heritage, visible again for the first time after decades.

screenwriters
Matevž Jerman, Jurij Meden
directors
Matevž Jerman, Jurij Meden
producers
Jerca Jerič, Andraž Jerič
co-producer
Ženja Leiler Kos
director of photography
Gašper Milkovič Biloslav
film editor
Saša Škulj
sound designer
Julij Zornik

featuring
Petra Belc, Vasja Bibič, Barbara Borčić, Greg de Cuir Jr., Jože Dolmark, Karpo Godina, Nerina Kocjančič, Naško Križnar, Davorin Marc, Miodrag Milošević, Varja Močnik, Ivan Nedoh, Igor Prassel, Tone Rački, Borko Radešček, Ivan Ramljak, Slobodan Šijan, Zdenko Vrdlovec, Matjaž Žbontar, Želimir Žilnik

production
Temporama
co-production
Slovenian Cinematheque, RTV Slovenija
in collaboration with
SFA - Slovenski filmski arhiv pri Arhivu RS
co-funding
Slovenian Film Centre

Temporama
Andraž Jerič
andraz@temporama.si

Matevž Jerman is a film director, film curator and film critic, as well as one of the co-founders of the Kraken Association for the Promotion of Short Film and the Programme Director of FeKK - Ljubljana Short Film Festival. As a selector of the short film section he collaborates with festivals Kino Otok - Isola Cinema and LIFFe. Since 2009 he has been working with the Slovenian Cinematheque's programming department, where in recent years he has been curating short film programmes and researching special avant-garde collections in the cinema archive.

Jurij Meden is a curator and head of film program at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. Previously he worked as head of the program department at the Slovenian Cinematheque in Ljubljana and as curator of film exhibitions at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York.

“Our documentary hopefully shows that amateur passion has generated a remarkable corpus of entirely original images and home-grown auteur approaches, which we can now safely call the history of Slovenian experimental cinema.”