The film director France Štiglic (1919–1993) is considered one of the most important creators in the history of Slovenian cinema – both due to his extensive film and television oeuvre and the important role he played in shaping the system of Slovenian film production and cinema in general. In his forty-year career, he created several short films, five breakthrough TV series and fifteen feature-length films, among them the first Slovenian sound fiction feature On Our Own Land. Although his works differ in genre and style, they are all permeated by his characteristic poetics, full of lyricism and humanism.
It was already in 1947 that Štiglic convinced the jury at the Venice International Film Festival and won the Bronze Lion for his short documentary film Youth Builds (1947). In the following years, he received many other awards for his filmmaking. Among the most important are several Arenas at the film festival in Pula, the Prešeren Award (1962), the AVNOJ Award (1976), which was the highest state award in Yugoslavia at the time, the Badjura Lifetime Achievement Award (1978) and the nomination for best foreign language film Oscarfor The Ninth Circle (1961).
France Štiglic was well aware of his significant contribution to Slovenian film history, which is why he bequeathed his film-related legacy to the Slovenian Theatre and Film Museum, the predecessor of the Slovenian Cinematheque. The bequeathed material constitutes the core of the exhibition, which sheds light on the director’s creative path and also his cultural and political engagement and pedagogical work. At the same time, the exhibition offers an insight into the lengthy and complex process of filmmaking, which the general public is mostly unfamiliar with. The rich documentary and photographic material is complemented by archival footage, posters, costumes and props from Štiglic’s feature films.
The idea for the exhibition dates back to 2019, when we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the filmmaker’s birth, and is part of a broader project named 100 Years of France Štiglic, conceived by the Slovenian Cinematheque together with the Slovenian Film Archives at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian Film Centre.
Conceived and curated by: Špela Čižman
Spatial interpretation of the content and design: Mojca Turk