Section: Spotlight: Ukraine

Drak sa vracia

Dragon's Return

Eduard Grečner

ČSSR (Slovakia), 1968, 81 Min

After a long absence potter Martin Lepiš, the "dragon", returns to his home village. The villagers eye him suspiciously, as unpleasant memories return to the surface. In the style of a ballad the film, one of the outstanding works of the Czechoslovak New Wave, tells a timeless tale about the power of resentment and prejudice.

In 1948 the Hungarian film theorist and director Béla Balász contributed to the first version of the script for this film, based on a novella of the same name from 1943 by Dobroslav Chrobák. In 1952 the then FAMU student Eduard Grečner composed a new version, yet he was only able to shoot the film several years later: the end result stands outs with its unusual combination of natural panoramas and folk motifs with cinematic experiments and a multi-award-winning avant-garde soundtrack by Ilja Zeljenka, quite possibly the most important Slovak film composer of his time.

Eduard Grečner -

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