The
cinema of Slovakia encompasses a range of themes and styles typical of European cinema. Yet there are a certain number of recurring themes that are visible in the majority of the important works. These include rural settings, folk traditions, and carnival. Even in the field of experimental film-making, there is frequently a celebration of nature and tradition, as for example in
Dušan Hanák's Pictures of the Old World (
Obrazy starého sveta, 1972). The same applies to blockbusters like
Juraj Jakubisko's A Thousand-Year Old Bee (
Tisícrocná vcela, 1983). The percentage of comedies, adventures, musicals, sci-fi films and similar
genres has been low by comparison to
dramas and historical films that used to include a notable subset of
social commentaries on events from the decade or two preceding the film. One of them,
Ján Kadár's and
Elmar Klos' The Shop on Main Street (
Obchod na korze, 1965), gave Slovak (as well as Czech and generally Czechoslovak) filmmaking its first
Oscar. Children's films were a perennial genre from the 1960s through the 1980s produced mainly as low-budget films by Slovak Television Bratislava. The themes of recent films have been mostly contemporary.