Cinema
The Sweet Time of Kalimagdora
Sladký čas Kalimagdory
Leopold Lahola · 1968
Synopsis
Jonáš lives an entire life every year, to the rhythm of the seasons: he becomes a child again in spring, matures into a man during the summer, gradually loses his strength in autumn, then withdraws for the winter to an isolated sheepfold, where he sleeps until New Year before being reborn. Hired as tutor to a boy by the industrialist Lebduch, he befriends the local people, among them Marta, but his relationship to time, so different from that of the others, shuts him into ties that never hold.
Context
Jan Weiss writes the story after his novel Spáč ve zvěrokruhu, and Lahola draws the screenplay from it. The German Rüdiger Bahr makes his film debut in the role of Jonáš, with Monika Zinnenberg, Gisela Hahn, Viktor Blaho and Magda Vášáryová. The director dies suddenly in Bratislava while work on the film is under way; it remains the only feature film he shot in Slovakia. The Slovak Film Institute has released it on DVD, with Slovak and English subtitles.
Who it is for
A lyrical fable shaped by the seasons, with no continuous plot, to be seen in Slovak with subtitles.
Prizes and reception
The only fiction film shot in Slovakia by a director returned from exile, and his last.