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Slovak Studies Program

Martin Votruba

 

See You in Hell, Friends

 

 

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The last in Juraj Jakubisko's early experimental period, See You in Hell, Friends was made thanks to the relaxation of communist control lingering for a while after the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 but finished when the brief period ended and shelved before its release because it reflected the invasion, rather than because of its outlandish style.
The finale shows the protagonists escaping an apocalyptic situation placed in the first half of the 20th century by their costuming and the car model, and perhaps even farther back by the peasant costumes, but the villagers wave the country's flags and shout "Come with us" (Poďte s nami), a clear variation on the popular Slovak anti-invasion chant "Be with us" (Buďte s nami), and the bizarre escape vehicle then passes a procession with the flags of the invaders, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. The divergent visual mix includes glimpses of border watchtowers the Communist regimes built to prevent defections to the democratic West, folkloric representations of good and evil from St. Nicholas Feast, and symbolic objects referenced in the dialogue.

 

Slovak cinema after World War II.

 

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