Ilja Zeljenka

Birth : 1932-12-21, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia [now Slovakia]

Death : 2007-07-13

Movies

Martin Slivka: The Man Who Planted Trees
A tribute to Martin Slivka, one of the most important personalities of Slovak cinematography and culture. He was the creator of Slovak documentary ethnographic film, director, screenwriter, dramaturgist, film theoretician, pedagogue, author and ethnograph, but mainly – exceptional person. This documentary is not only a remembrance of maestro Slivka through words of his close friends and colleagues, but also an attempt to slightly uncover the secret of his rich life and work.
Dolina
Original Music Composer
Maple and Juliana
Original Music Composer
A girl is transformed into a maple tree by her impulsive and angry mother. Three poor wandering musicians come by the tree and create instruments from it. Walking around the country instead of happiness they bring death everywhere with their cursed instruments. However they cannot get rid of them, unless they bury the wooden instruments at the place of the tree. The three are anything but harmonious, each taking in their disputes various stances.
Jano
Original Music Composer
Ľudovít Fulla
Original Music Composer
If I Had a Gun
Original Music Composer
Vlado, an intelligent boy living in a small village, has fantasies that take him away from his humdrum life. But as the Nazi occupation begins to encroach on the townsfolk his fantasies and reality begin to merge.
Mŕtve oči
Original Music Composer
Television film, based on Rudolf Jašík's novel of the same name, tells the story of a blind boy rejected by his own family.
National Artist Professor Karol Plicka
Original Music Composer
A film portrait about Professor Karol Plicka, focusing on his films, photography and folklore work.
Brat
Original Music Composer
A television film based on a novella "Zhanobená krv" ("Dishonored Blood") by František Švantner.
The Genius
Original Music Composer
A Slovak comedy from director Štefan Uher and screenwriter Alfonz Bednár.
Nevera
Original Music Composer
Smrť Pavla Duchaja
Original Music Composer
Dragon's Return
Original Music Composer
This is a ballad about love, hate, and a search for a way out of loneliness. It is a dramatic story about the strange potter, Martin Leaps, nicknamed Dragon, who is suspected by the villagers as the cause of natural disasters. He lost his wife, his home, and his freedom due to false accusations. After years he returns to his native village. Putting his own life to risk, he saves a herd of sheep from a forest fire in the hills. But not even this heroic deed helps him to win back the friendship of the locals.
Three Daughters
Conductor
A classical ballad motif about an aging father and his three daughters is quite unusually here set against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia of the 1950s. After having been expropriated, the former landowner Majda seeks refuge with his three daughters whom he had sent to a convent a long time ago. But only the youngest one is able to forgive him and she is willing to take care of him despite the threat of expulsion from the order.
Three Daughters
Original Music Composer
A classical ballad motif about an aging father and his three daughters is quite unusually here set against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia of the 1950s. After having been expropriated, the former landowner Majda seeks refuge with his three daughters whom he had sent to a convent a long time ago. But only the youngest one is able to forgive him and she is willing to take care of him despite the threat of expulsion from the order.
Zpověď
Original Music Composer
The Man Leaves
Music
Ethnographic documentary about customs and ceremonies connected with death in a Bulgarian village.
Kryštál z Istanbulu
Original Music Composer
Mašinka
Original Music Composer
Documentary film about one of the last forest railways in Remetské Hámre, which transports workers and carries wood.
Štyri dni Ľudovíta Čonku
Original Music Composer
A documentary picture of the coexistence of man and nature. Footage of one year in the life of Ľudovít Čonka and his wife, who are the only inhabitants of an abandoned island on the eastern Slovak river Latorica.
Miraculous Virgin
Original Music Composer
A film adaptation of the novelette of the same title written by Dominik Tatarka depicts the life of a young generation of artists that was formed in Slovakia during the war. Anabella, a young and beautiful girl meets a group of artists. She awakens their erotic desires but also pure feelings of love; she becomes the object of their secret fantasies as well as their artistic inspiration. And it seems that the boundaries between reality and fantasy suddenly cease to exist.
Nylon Moon
Ilja Zeljenka
Nylon Moon
Original Music Composer
Every Week Seven Days
Original Music Composer
The film could have been a lyrical evocation of the ČSSR's first generation: the youngsters born during the war, who grew up in a state violently at pains to find and define itself, and were now ready to break away from the nation-builder ethics of their elders – but Grečner turned it into an anxiety-riddled existentialist vision of a whole globe in fear.
Kto si bez viny...
Original Music Composer
The Sun in a Net
Original Music Composer
Oldrich "Fajolo" Fajták (Marián Bielik), a student who directs quasi-existentialist verbal abuse at his girlfriend Bela Blazejová (Jana Beláková), takes off to a formally volunteer summer work camp at a farm where he meets her grandfather.
Men from the Gader Valley
Original Music Composer
A documentary about the work of lumberjacks in hard-to-access locations.
Dáma v čiernom
Original Music Composer
My z deviatej A
Original Music Composer
Skaly a ľudia
Original Music Composer
Evička ide mestom
Original Music Composer