Notes on Brenk’s Notes

What Francè Brenk implicitly did for Slovenian culture can compare to the work of at least Rudolf Arnheim and Hugo Münsterberg combined. His 1951 book Notes on film should be considered the first case of an explicit theoretical writing about film in Slovenian and, therefore, the basis of Slovenian film theory. The book’s contents show that the author had thoroughly examined the film field from interdisciplinary aspects, which include, in addition to the aesthetic, also the sociological, economic and general philosophical elements. Notes are therefore a work in the field of film studies avant la lettre, but also a policy document conceptualizing the foundation of film production in Slovenia. Hence, the book contains a discourse that emerged at the intersection of the film theory of the time, the historical position of the Slovenian community and the political and ideological circumstances. This means that Brenk’s writing aimed at the realization of the project of national cinema, which seemed to him to be a result and at the same time an agent of social changes.

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