Film director Matjaž Klopčič died

In his rich creative life he worked as a film and television director, film set designer, designer, and writer. Until 2004 he was a professor at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana.

We was awarded on several occasions for his work in the field of film; among others the Župančič Award in 1973, also in 1973 he received the Badjura Award, and the Prešeren Award in 1995. In 2001 he was granted the Metod Badjura Lifetime Achievement Award. Upon the 100^th anniversary of Slovene film in 2005 he was honoured with the Golden Order for services for life’s work in the field of filmmaking. In 1973 and 1975 he was also awarded with the Golden Arena Award in Pula.

Matjaž Klopčič was born on 4 December 1934 in Ljubljana, where in 1959 he graduated from architecture. He entered the world of film by coincidence at the shooting of the film Parvenus, where he met Mile Korun and set designer Niko Matula he assisted to in 1958. With the help of the then minister of culture Beno Zupančič he obtained the scholarship of the French government. The scholarship made it possible for him to study direction in Paris between the years 1963 and 1965. There, he also assisted the cult French cineaste Jean-Luc Godard at his film Bande a Part (Band of Outsiders). At the time Klopčič got fond of the French New Wave films and works of directors Jean Renoir and Marcel Carne he used to talk about to his students in his lectures.

He began his creative way with short films; most known are On the Sunny Side of the Street, Eye Drop Romance, and Last Homework. Later he made over ten full-length feature films and several television plays and films. Full-lengths On the Run and On Wings of paper (1967) made him famous and ranged him among most prominent representatives of the Yugoslavian authorial film.

His most successful films are Blossoms in Autumn (1973) that was also made as a TV serial, and The Widowhood of Karolina Žašler (1976). The last was also screened in the competition programme of the Berlin Film festival. The Borštnik Ring winner Milena Zupančič played admirably in both films. Klopčič’s films On Wings of Paper, Fear (1974) and Heritage (1984) were showed in the official programme of the Cannes Film Festival. Also mentioned should be On the Run, Funeral Feast (1969), Oxygen (1970), Temptations (1979), and My Dad, the Socialist Kulak (1987). Among television films most memorable are Mad Painter, Black Orchid, and Triptych of Agata Schwarzkobler. Ljubljana the Beloved made in 2005 is his last full-length film. With this film he went back to his youth and bowed to his home town.