11 Titles / Updated Feb. 27, 2023

Ema Kugler, recipient of Grand Prešeren Award 2023

Človek s senco (2019)
Fiction Film / 100' / 90 awards Awards
Humans’ biggest delusion is their illusion of freedom. New-borns have no choice, they are brought into this world regardless of their will, groomed as utterly powerless beings to submit to the social norms imposed by those in the position of power… But what if there is an alternative?
Odmevi časa (2013)
Fiction Film / 92' / 22 awards Awards
What is it that echoes in this film? The code...Religion equals politics, equals coercion, equals violence. Humanity is an amorphous mass which is supposed to serve this code. In the long run this is impossible.
Za konec časa (2009)
Fiction Film / 125' 28'' / 1 award Awards
For the End of Time is a film about the soul, the body and about the inability to integrate the two entities that make up the form of civilisation called the human being. A human being is not a being in itself; it is a construct, a code of civilisation within a specified time and place. A human being is not a uniform being, it is a rift between many things; the worst one being the rift one carries inside, the rift between body and soul, life is nothing other than a constant battle between the two entities, the two greatest possible opposites, as each individual is nothing other than a manifestation of the continuous conflict of the two strangers within. The End of Time is a film about searching about an eternal yearning for Find It!
Le grand macabre (2005)
Animated Video Film / 104' / 1 award Awards
Le Grand Macabre is an experimental film made after the audio recording of the opera with the same name, recorded live in Paris, Theatre du Chatelet, in February 1998. The composer György Ligeti, a contemporary classical avant-garde author, who made a strong impression on music itself, also enriched the field of film with unforgettable passages in the Kubrick's Odyssey 2001, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.
Phantom (2004)
Fiction Film / 87' 30'' / 3 awards Awards
Phantom is a Slovenian Fiction Film. Featuring Janez Sever, Slavko Sever, Marko Mandić. It is defined as an art and experimental. It was directed by Ema Kugler. It was produced by Zavod ZANK. It has received 3 awards.
Homo Erectus (2000)
Short Fiction Video Film / 43' 28'' / 3 awards Awards
Homo Erectus is a film without words. Only music and images. And if Ema Kugler had to describe the moving pictures: "It is something like a dark, surrealistic dance of an everyman with his own death. I saw all these images emerging out of the darkness of my subconsciousness, haunting, possessing me."
Menhir (1999)
Short Fiction Video Film / 35' 16''
Menhir is a Slovenian Short Fiction Video Film. Featuring Sanja Nešković Peršin, Sebastijan Starič, Demeter Bitenc. It is defined as an art, experimental and video-art. It was directed by Ema Kugler. It was produced by V.S. Video and Forum Ljubljana.
Postaja 25 (1997)
Short Fiction Video Film / 27' / 1 award Awards
The artist continues with her main preoccupations: the relationship between a man and a woman, the irruption of the mythical into the rituals of everyday life. The video film uses the numerous potentials of electronic manipulation of the picture. The finest scenes are those of morphing (electronic transformation), where a figure from a painted canvas turns into an identical figure on the video screen, or the latter freezes into a figure on a fixed picture. The artist once again insists on the real natural environment, but deforms and thus identifies it with the artificiality of video image.
Tajga (1996)
Short Fiction Video Film / 8' 23'' / 1 award Awards
Taiga is a dark video landscape with human figures in menacing costumes, but it also includes two almost naked fighters and a drowning woman. Wax dogs add to the coldness of the video taiga; they actually melt away, while the electronic only serves to accelerate the process. The essence of taiga is the act of destruction or transition. The destruction of art form creates a new, entirely different pattern. The transition becomes an event with a message. Sculptures are the landmarks of the beginning and of the end.
Obiskovalec (1995)
Short Fiction Video Film / 27' 28''
The artist insists on the duality of human nature: the same dreadfulness is part of both the mythical and the real world. The duality is explicitly presented by means of electronic effects that can petrify a human face, or wall up a human body in a few seconds. Human figures dressed in extravagant costumes are returned back to nature by means of electronic effects: a man in a costume reminiscent of a bird transforms into a real bird. The costumed and real birds are accentuated by the bird's eye view, which always emphasizes man's smallness and forlornness in his own world and within nature.
Hidra (1993)
Short Fiction Video Film / 15' 39''
Mythology in the video works by Ema Kugler is inscribed in rituals of everyday life. This time it is the theme of Hydra with many facets. The theme is represented by the separate scenes featuring human figures in leather costumes (created by the artist herself) that constrain their movements, thus emphasizing their separation from nature. The last trace of their respective connection is shown in a ritual relationship between a man and a, bull, although even this relationship involves man’, deeply ingrained cruelty towards animals. But even this connection ends with the blood that symbolically floods the video image.