Dialogi
Eurozine
Dialogi
2011-12-20
Summary of Dialogi 10/2011
Film editor Matic Majcen in the introductory editorial analyzes the state of Slovenian film. This year's film festival in Portoroz revealed a great deal of liveliness on the independent scene and a trend of creativity that is moving more and more boldly away from large public institutions. After about fifteen years we can now also refer to the emergence of a new generation of film artists. The young directors Nejc Gazvoda and Klemen Dvornik with their films Izlet (A Trip) and Kruha in iger (Bread and Games) have brought their generation's themes and spontaneous humor as well as new actors into film, and shown that their creativity is embedded in current international trends at all levels.
This issue of Dialogi is devoted to puppets and puppet theatre. There is very little theoretical literature in this field in Slovenia; the journal for puppet culture Lutka (Puppet) stopped coming out 20 years ago. At Dialogi we thus attempted to revive this field and invited a new, young generation of authors, most of them still students, to contribute their ideas. Their articles look at the pre-theatre puppet as part of the rituals of indigenous communities, the child's puppet and of course the theatre puppet as technological object at the intersection of body and mind, the artificial and the natural. They also ask what kinds of new horizons are being opened up to puppetry by new media, and what new types of puppets such as animatrons and virtual puppets have to offer, as well as connections with robotics. Two articles reach back into history and analyze modernization and Ludism in Slovenian puppetry in the 1960s and 1970s, and the puppet scripts of Dane Zajc, one of the most important Slovenian writers of the second half of the 20th century. The topic is rounded out with interviews with two puppet artists: Alenka Pirjevec and Silvan Omerzu. Under the mentorship of Primoz Jesenko the following authors collaborated: Nika Arhar, Pia Brezavscek, Jasmina Zaloznik, Katja Cicigoj, Anja Bajda, Anja Bunderla, Anita Volcanjsek, Ursa Adamic and Tea Kovse.
In Reading we publish short stories by Milan Petek Levokov and Tomo Podstensek, and poems by Lucija Mlinaric. In Cultural diagnosis Natasa Kovsca writes about the book Od Narodnega doma do Narodne galerije (From the National House to the National Gallery), and Cvetka Bevc about the book of short stories Melanholicna zrenja (Melancholic Gazes) by Robi Simonisek. Tanja Tolar reports on the comprehensive exhibition of the works of Renaissance artist Jan Gossaert in the National Gallery in London.