South East European Film Festival

More about “Slovenia Begs to Differ,” a unique
retrospective of Slovenian films, 1945-present, that played in September at the
Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater. It was curated by Vera Mijojlic, artistic
director of the South East European Film Festival (SEE FEST) and Shannon
Kelley, head of public programs at UCLA’s Film and Television Archive, with
special thanks to Nerina T. Kocjancic of the Slovenian Film Center.

My second Slovenian film experience featured the charming
Vesna, a film jewel from 1953 that is
so beloved that Slovenia named its highest film award the Vesna. It’s a love
letter to the newly-created Yugoslav Republic, bursting with the energy and
enthusiasm of youth. Three university chums decide the only way to pass their
final exams is to cheat by wooing the fat, ungainly girl they think is their
professor’s daughter, so she might smuggle them the answers. They call her
Vesna, which means Spring. When they realize their mistake, that the real Vesna
is a beautiful spirited co-ed, of course love gets in the way. I loved the
film’s insistence that all roads forward were now open in this new country
(created in 1946), and that women could be anything they wanted, as the
professor’s daughter conquers her fears and learns to skydive with 10 other
beauties. It was a terrifically optimistic film from a country barely eight
years past Nazi occupation in the most awful war in history. Teamed that night with
Vesna was 100% Slovenian, an entertaining 2005 documentary on what makes
expatriate woman, living in the U.S. for over 30 years, identify so strongly as
still being Slovenian. It was a great opportunity to see this film again, for
those who like me who missed its 2006 U.S. premiere at SEE FEST, the annual
South East European Film Festival.

Stay tuned to the Retrospective’s conclusion! – Deirdre