Kanal Open Air Cinema

Desperado Tonic

Varja Močnik, Boris Petkovič, Hanna Slak, Zoran Živulović, 2004, 71 min

Four stories from the life of cinematographer Štrocki, combined into one film: In a seaside town, on the square, he prepares a film screening, while a television crew films a documentary about the event. The TV crew comes into conflict with the locals, who enter the film with their everyday tasks. Štrocki is faced with a challenge that could bring the filming to an end. During the screening of a film about the heroes of an occupied town, Štrocki is visited in the screening room by the Heroine, almost the true love of his life. On the way to Jordan, Štrocki gets lost in the forests of Dolenjska, but not entirely by accident. These dark forests are known for their ghostly roads and lonely farms. There is no way out of the forest until it dawns. And not all farms are so lonely... Štrocki has terrible vision problems - the image before his eyes flashes like a projector at low speed. Nevertheless, he drives to the airport on a rainy night, where he meets an immortal creature and a copy of this special projection. Desperado Tonic is a film omnibus by four young Slovenian film directors. On this occasion, Boris Petkovič wrote: Desperado Tonic The idea for the film Desperado Tonic was born from my then fascination with bohemian life and life on the road, together with a group of creative collaborators. Before that, I had been living the life of a street theater for several years: I performed in places all over Slovenia, sleeping wherever I was offered a place to stay, and occasionally in a car – in a Ford station wagon, where I converted the back of the vehicle into an emergency shelter. I searched for picturesque towns in various places where I could screen my short film Forward, while recording the stories of people who would watch the film. Among the planned locations were screenings in the middle of the Kolpa River, where the film could be viewed from both the Croatian and Slovenian sides, a projection on the facades of buildings in Ljubljana, and a projection on the main square in Kanal ob Soči. The Kanal fascinated me with its seaside picturesqueness, with its lively square, through which the regional road runs, and with its tradition of jumping off bridges. I will cut the story short here: the idea for a documentary film fell through, but it found new life in a feature omnibus. I filmed my first story in it, and I wrote the script specifically for the Kanal ob Soči. In 2000, during the European Football Championship, in which Slovenia qualified for a major competition for the first time, I shot my first film with a budget and a professional crew in ten hot summer days – when the asphalt melted under the chairs and we left behind traces like measles – I shot my first film with a budget and a professional crew. I included a lot of inspiration from real life in the Kanal in the film: jumping off bridges, closing the cinema, village eccentrics… Since we occasionally closed the road for filming, we were treated to emotional outbursts from drivers in passing cars. A nearby bar was broadcasting the European Championship matches, so the players ran out of the frame at every loud shout to check if Slovenia had scored a goal. The final scene, which takes place at night in Kanal ob Soči, did not involve water being poured from nearby windows, but viewers of the film screening may also recognize themselves in it.

The Traveling Isonzo-Soča Cinema, which runs from 2024, is setting up annual cinemas in picturesque locations along the border, in collaboration with key partners from the region. The event is part of the Go Green Cinema project, which addresses the wider cross-border public, local residents, occasional foreign visitors and participants within the official programme of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025. It is produced with the support of the European Union from the GO! 2025 Small Projects Fund of the Interreg VI-A Italy-Slovenia programme 2021-2027, managed by the EGTC GO. www.ita-slo.eu & www.euro-go.eu/spf