426. That’s my best-guess estimate for the number of film-festivals I’ve attended since my professional involvement started with them in 1999 — “attended” meaning, as I define it, at least a three-night stay; otherwise it’s just a “visit.” The vast majority of these have been in Europe, and while there are several long-running film-festivals that I’ve still never been to myself, I like to think I’ve at least heard about them, and have some basic idea of what they are. Especially if they’re in the eastern/central parts of the continent; I’ve been based in Vienna since 2019. Which is why I was so surprised when in August a pal told me he was curating an imminent retrospective at “Cinematik” in Piestany, Slovakia, and that this was one of the major showcases of new films in Slovakia, and that this year’s edition would be the 21st. A well-kept secret?
Very curious as to how such a festival could have flown for so long under all my radars, I decided to check it out for myself — not via a proper multi-night “attendance,” but just a quickie day-trip, the town of Piestany being less than 150km from my front door. Not that I’d ever even heard of the place until my pal mentioned it. Piestany, or more accurately Piešťany, is a spa-resort town (pop. 28,000) on the river Váh, an hour by train from the Slovakian capital Bratislava… which is itself less than an hour by train from Vienna. Nowadays the name seems to be primarly known among older ice-hockey fans, oddly enough, thanks to the infamous 1987 Cold-War flare-up alliteratively dubbed the “Punch-up in Piestany” — a scuffle whose Wikipedia entry somehow runs to more than 3,000 words (i.e. more than twice the length of this article.)
Checking out the festival schedule (which featured numerous high-profile current arthouse films including this year’s Cannes 1-2 Fjord and Minotaur), I zeroed in on my Prague-based Welsh friend/colleague Christopher Small’s five-film focus dedicated to veteran Danish writer-director Nils Malmros, none of whose pictures I’d seen. The earliest title in the list was his 1981 drama Tree of Knowledge, showing in Kino Fontána at 11am on a Wednesday morning. Investigating the train-timetables, I decided on the 7.14am from Vienna, arriving Bratislava at 8.10, which would give me 35 minutes before the Piestany local departed. A 9.52am arrival would allowing me a leisurely stroll to the cinema, with perhaps even a coffee and a pastry en-route…
But at 10.45am, I was still, frustratingly, on my way to Fontana, thanks to both the Vienna-Bratislava and Bratislava-Piestany trains being delayed. Luckily and crucially, in Piestany I was able to get a taxi from the rank outside the station — albeit the fifth one I tried — which then moseyed its way through the streets of the town (immediately identifiable as both “leafy” and “sleepy”) and got me to the door of the cinema at 10.53am. Seven minutes to spare; mission accomplished! Or was it….?
I looked for a box-office but the only thing that resembled such a thing was closed. So I headed to the entrance of the screening-room where two teenage volunteers were scanning passes for the numerous entering patrons. I asked where I could get a ticket, and was told that single tickets weren’t available for individual screenings. In a bizarrely bureaucratic, Kafkaesque twist, only a €20 entire-festival pass could be purchased, and for this I’d have to go to the “House of Arts” five minutes’ walk away. I explained that I wouldn’t have time to do this even if I wanted to (and I didn’t want to, given that I was only going to see the one film). I also explained that I’d by this stage spent more than four hours in transit just to see Tree of Knowledge, and that in addition to the train tickets I’d splashed out €6 on the taxi for the final leg of the journey.
Exasperated but trying to remain professionally polite, I was frankly on the verge of just walking past the volunteers and into the screening, dealing with whatever dire consequences later — when Christopher S smilingly materialised alongside Tomáš, the festival guest-department manager, and I was ushered inside.
As I took my seat I was pleasantly surprised by how many people had turned up to see a somewhat obscure, 45-year-old Danish film on a warm and sunny morning in a town of just 28,000 people. There were comfortably over 100 present for the introduction by Christopher and Malmros (a sprightly 81, currently preparing his next production), and then the film itself — a sensitive and engrossing episodic ensemble, with the whole youthful ensemble outstanding, about schoolchildren in Malmros’ native Aarhus (setting for all of his work) in the late 1950s. Tree of Knowledge which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, ends on in a startlingly abrupt way — jarringly so, I felt at the time, though it makes more sense in retrospect.
After the screening I while away some hours in Piestany, a textbook example of a place that has “seen better days.” Faded glories; but not all faded. A wander through an attractive park took me to the aforementioned House of Arts, a classic of blocky Brutalism but clearly kept in very decent nick. Inside (lots of red plastic) and out (lots of concrete) it suggested a miniature, more modestly-imagined version of the legendary/notorious Hotel Thermal, main hub of the world-renowed Karlovy Vary film-festival which also takes place in a (much bigger) spa-resort, in the Czech Republic in August.
In much worse condition, indeed a state of alarming dilapidation, is the Hotel Slovan a couple of minutes away across the park. Opened in 1905 as the Grand Hotel Royal, this was the opulent heart of Piestany for decades until the fatal year of 1985 when it was (a) architecturally listed and (b) promptly closed to the public. Various refurbishment plans were announced over the ensuing years, but the crumbling colossus — famed for its spectacular fountain, after which the Fontana cinema is perhaps named — now stands as an embarrassing and surely now unsalvageable eyesore, mute testament to the overlapping deficiencies of late Czechoslovakia-era communism and the cowboy capitalism which followed in its wake post-Slovakian independence (1993).
While it now looks like the setting for an eerie horror-movie, the hotel’s own story would make for a terrific, if depressing documentary. Which would have to include some shots of the incongruously beautiful, flowerbed-enhanced Beethoven memorial just a few metres from the Slovan’s “temporary” graffiti-strewn hoardings which keep the public out. Yes, apparently Beethoven ‘woz ere’ too, though details of this are now somewhat sketchy, and local historians are a bit vague: perhaps it was 1801, perhaps for a few nights (an “attendance,” rather than a visit.)
Given the Beethoven connection, it’s a little odd that Piestany’s cultural footprint should now be associated with cinema rather than music. Christopher, myself and our Dutch critic/chef friend Mike Naafs (whose photo adorns this article) spent the latter part of the afternoon on the steps of the House Of Arts drinking beers purchased in the adjacent marquee. In plastic beakers (€2 deposit) adorned with somewhat fanciful representations of a bustling Piestany, flown over by seagulls (I never saw or heard one of the damn things, thankfully).
The marquee was always pretty full, the food-trucks adjacent were making some coin, and it was also noticeable that the House of Arts’ screenings that afternoon had also attracted very solid audiences. Cinematik, which has reportedly grown significantly in the last decade or so, clearly manages to draw more than respectable numbers despite its relatively low profile outside Slovakia. That said, it does strike me as something of a potential “sleeping giant”: why shouldn’t this country have an international film-festival attractive to international visitors/attendees? What’s good enough for the Czechs is good enough for the Slovaks!
Anyway, I look forward to finding out if it continues to thrive/expand on a future, longer visit/attendance; this one started drawing to at end as darkness fell on the House of Arts steps around 7pm, and an the grey clouds of an incipient storm marked the close not only of the daylight but also of summer. The new, cooler season blew rapidly in with damp gusts that shook the park’s myriad trees. And by the time I reached Bratislava — after a rapid walk all the way back to the station, and a happily undelayed train — the first autumn storm was drenching the Slovakian capital with the rousingly passionate fury of a proper Piestany punch-up.