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Two feature films and a selection of short films by the legendary Slovak director Viktor Kubal have been digitally restored by the Slovak Film Institute. This collection subsequently competed at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the festival of restored and archival films. Anifilm will screen the iconic feature film Brigand Jurko from this collection.

Kubal was inspired by the legend of Slovak highwayman Juraj Jánošík and filmed new adventures of this hero. Legend has it that Jánošík ‘robbed the rich and gave the loot to the poor’ and Kubal, who’s known the legend since he was a child, looked at it from a different perspective. ‘Back then, there was only one textbook and one local history and Jánošík was everywhere. On top of that, I spent several years in school in my aunt’s village of Terchová and then I would spend my summer holidays there. There was nothing that would stick in my memory as much as the stories and tales about this hero who was born in Terchová,’ explained Kubal, who started working on Brigand Jurko in 1974. The visual form of the film is characterised by his caricature-like artistic style, which is the foundation of his humour (Kubal is one of the founders of modern caricature). Brigand Jurko is an original and ambitious film made using simple, accessible yet thorough animation. However dramatic, romantic and slightly pathetic it may seem, humour always prevails.

Viktor Kubal (1923–1997) was not only the founder of Slovak animated film, but starting in the mid-1960s, its leading figure. He was a prolific filmmaker who made almost four hundred animated films (short, television and feature films) and was known for his incredible versatility – in his films, he often took care of the script, graphic design, animation, editing and cinematography.