By: Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 5/7/2024 – A fascinating documentary Kino Volta (Slovenia, 2023) was one of the screenings on Friday as part of the 19th Annual South East European Film Festival (SEEfest) in Los Angeles.
Filmmaker Martin Turk from Trieste in Slovenia decided to make this lively documentary about four entrepreneurs from Trieste, once the main seaport of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire back in 1909, and how they met the then-unknown Irish writer James Joyce with a plan to open the first cinema in Dublin, Ireland.
These four men along with writer James Joyce, who had moved to Trieste, tried to launch the dream of cinema between Trieste and Dublin. The undertaking proved to be a failure, like that of many characters in the Dubliners stories and in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. This crazy project is documented in the sparkling and lively docu-drama film Il Cinema Volta (Kino Volta) by Martin Turk, this time involved in a work of literary meta-documentary, with many noteworthy ideas.
We soon meet a community of Slovenian actors and theater people from the city of Trieste. Dominating above all is the director, creator of the operation, Danijel Malalan, who takes on the guise of Antonio Machnich, theatrical impresario, and entrepreneur, who convinces a company of stateless, international cinema artists in the avant-garde idea of opening the first cinema in Dublin in 1909.
The documentary soon moves into pure and nostalgic meta theatre. The characters are all theater actors, partly Slovenian, some Irish, very few Italians. Two visiting Irish actors end up cast as James Joyce (Daniel Grimston) and his wife Nora Barnacle Joyce (Roisin Browne). The other actors are called to interpret the characters of the time, all to retrace the exploits of the famous Volta Cinema in Dublin. The result is a multi-ethnic portrait of Trieste, with many references to Central European literature and the inclusive culture that passed through the Friulian city at the beginning of the 20th century.
Il Cinema Volta” is a film that smells of theatre, of auditions, and the once shining province of Trieste. Director Martin Turk chose to shoot the reconstructions on historical footage from 1909 in the streets of a modern Trieste – a bold move that works. The scenes evoke images of the futurist avant-garde and spontaneous cinema of the origins at the beginning of the 20thcentury.
Kino Volta is partly based on an essay by Drago Jančarj, in which the Slovenian writer disclosed an anecdote about the first Dublin movie theater, which was opened with Joyce by this group of Central European entrepreneurs in Trieste. Nikla Petruška Panizon is Katarina Mahnič, Danijel Malalan and her husband Anton. They have a wealth of experience as visionary entrepreneurs who, right after the birth of the seventh art, set about showing films.
One day in September 1909, Mahničeva met in Trieste with Janez Rebac, the owner of the local cinema Salone Edison, Frančiška Novak from Piran and Giuseppe Caris from Trieste, who has been involved in films for a long time, and then lawyer Nicoloj Vidacovich. The real surprise is that James Joyce is also a part of the company, because in fact he encouraged the most daring adventure to establish a company in Trieste, which will later open a cinema in Dublin.
Turko’s work was built in a very special way, as it interweaves the historical events of the environment, which at that time was a rich meeting point of cultures and peoples, with today’s time and changes, which once again place Trieste among the goals of the international tourist offer. The film was thus mostly filmed in the premises of the Cultural Center in Petronio Street and interwoven with the present-day Joyce Museum and the income of two young Irish actors, who of course soon embodied James and his wife Nora. All this is enriched with the narration of historians and intellectuals, who give the whole a new framework.
James Joyce lived in Trieste from 1909 until the year of his death in 1941. Most of his literary output was written in Trieste, a city at cultural and language crosswords– a smorgasbord of linguistic entanglement that obviously influenced Joyce’s experimentation in Finnegan’s Wake. Director Martin Turk has made a number of films including A Good Day’s Work (2018) and Don’t Forget to Breathe (2019)
