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Second Run releases Dragon´s Return

Second Run releases Dragon´s Return as its fourth title of the Slovak classics series and presents it to the English-speaking audiences. Eduard Grečner's film is following the Second Run DVD titles of Slovak Golden Era Sun in a Net, Birds, Orphans and Fools and Pictures of the Old World.

One of the most exciting discoveries in all of Slovak cinema, Dragon's Return is a ballad of love, revenge and desire. The story is the adaptation of the novella of the same name written by Dobroslav Chrobák. Grečner had been dazzled by the book´s lyrical qualities, but he was also daunted by the challenge of transposing those qualities to film, of rendering visually the interior, ‘invisible’ realities that the novella captures so poetically.

In the exclusive Second Run´s interview Grečner reveals his tough path to the shooting of the film: „The director Stanislav Barabáš, to whom I had offered the script, encouraged me with the decisive declaration: ´Only you can film Chrobák´s text. ´However the theme of Dragon´s Return was not what the people in charge wanted. They wanted contemporary themes, about the building of socialism. It was very difficult to get support to realise the script. It succeeded under the pretext of ´putting the treasures of Slovak literature on film´. But this diplomatic pretext was also true. Chrobák´s prose is such a treasure: the lyrical form of the story, minimal in dialogue and rich with the atmosphere of the landscape and the people that I love. I then went through a struggle to give visual form to this suggestive prose text – simply put, a struggle not to ´spoil´ its beauty.“

Grečner struggled with it successfully. His hauntingly poetic film is also an authentic, revealing account of peasant life in a world isolated from history and ruled by superstition - beautifully realised by Vincent Rosinec’s luminous monochrome cinematography, and enhanced by an award-winning score from Ilja Zeljenka.

Peter Hames, expert in Czech and Slovak cinematography, describes the film by the words: “An intersection between modern art and folk culture... an eternal ballad about the essence of life”

The official release date of the DVD is August 24, 2015. The DVD is presented in HD restoration, with new English subtitles and features a new essay on the film by author and academic Jonathan Owen accompanied by exclusive interview with the director Eduard Grečner.

Second Run DVDs are available in stores, through the website of Second Run and all the online retailers such as:
Dragon´s Return on Amazon
Dragon´s Return on Zavvi

published: 18.08.2015
updated: 11.08.2020