Slovenian Film Director Jane Kavčič Died
It was way back in 1948 in the darkened auditorium of the Union Cinema. They were showing the Slovenian film On Our Own Land, the first Slovene-language feature film. Memories of the war, and of the end of the war, were still fresh, and watching Štiglic’s film was a very emotional experience for most people. Not least for Jane Kavčič, who had worked alongside Štiglic as his assistant during the making of the first postwar Slovenian film, and who perhaps then had finally decided to follow a career as a film director. Jane Kavčič, born in 1923 in Spodnji Logatec, had known for a long time that he was interested in creativity. Even as a schoolboy, when the darkened cinema held for him a magical allure. He was an avid reader of Our Cinema and even landed some juvenile roles as a theatre actor. He drank in every exciting and beautiful development in the art. After the war Jane Kavčič was a soldier-kulturnik. Most of his work at the time involved the theatre; in Ptuj military kulturniki appeared on a proper theatre stage for the first time.
Following demobilisation Jane Kavčič fell straight into the filming of In the Heart of Europe, which was renamed On Our Own Land (1948) when France Štiglic took over as director. Following this all-round experience of film-making, Jane Kavčič got his first independent directorial credit with The Granite of the Pohorje Plateau (1948), a self-contained film which formed part of the Obzornik newsreel. He then directed several Obzornik newsreels and documentaries, and also tried his hand as the director of the first propaganda films, notably the excellent Man With A Briefcase, featuring Frane Milčinski-Ježek. He also made the country’s first real tourist film, 24 Hours in Slovenia (1952), and enjoyed great success with the film version of the fairy tale Sulček the Bear and the Little Butterfly (1958), to verses by the poet Janez Menart.
In those days Jane Kavčič was one of the film makers most trusted by the director of Triglav Film, Mr Tuma. This was one of the reasons he was pushed into working on a number of then-popular co-productions, usually as the director of the Slovenian unit. On films such as Dalmatian Wedding, The Great Blue Road and The Paddock he worked with a succession of eminent directors including von Barania, Gilo Pontecorvo and Armand Gatti.
His real directorial debut was The Farewell of Andrej Vitužnik an episode of the omnibus Three Stories (Jane Kavčič, Igor Pretnar, France Kosmč, 1955). This project was to provide an indication of his unique creative approach. In addition to his numerous Slovenian films he also made a notable foray into neighbouring Croatia, where he made the enormously successful children’s film The Dragon Hunt (1961).
Kavčič first love was, and is, film. He has stuck with film, with rare stubborness and tenaciousness, right up to the present day. Particularly important among his films are his feature film debut Action (1960), which takes a unique look at the Partisan resistance during the war, and A Minute For Murder (1962), actually the first true Slovenian urban film, which is perhaps why it was so harshly criticised. He returned to Partisan themes with The Fugitive (1973), in which he looked once again at some of the side-issues and antagonisms of events during the war. But Jane Kavčič found his true medium with children’s films and family films. He proved his great ability at working with children with The Invisible Battalion (1973), but his true films are Hang On, Doggy (1977), The Apprenticeship of the Inventor Polž (1982), What a Sun (1984) and Maya and the Starboy (1988). One of his most fundamental innovations in the field of children’s films was his transferral of the action to the urban environment. His characters suddenly became the children next door. In Maya and the Starboy Kavčič tackled a new genre - science fiction. This was a very brave decision given the modest funding available for Slovenian productions.
Today Jane Kavčič, the doyen of Slovene film makers, is putting his name to a new children’s film - What Now, Luka?(2000) - which he says was inspired by his two grandsons, who are now almost adults. But to paraphrase Saint-Exupery: all adults were children once, it’s just that some adults don’t remember this. If there is someone this does not apply to, it is Jane Kavčič. He has retained to the present day something of the child’s unspoiled spirit and simplicity.
Kavčič’s childlike purity is probably one of the reasons his children’s films are so popular, and one of the reasons why he is the winner of the lifetime achievement award after fifty years of a life spent in film and for film.
Matjaž Zajec (from the 3rd Slovenian Film Festival catalogue, Portoroz 2000)