En-Knap

A complex landscape of improvised situations immersed in a perpetual network of mines under the Slovenian town of Trbovlje (Iztok Kovács' hometown and his main source of inspiration). The realistic imagery of this post-socialist city, which seems to still exist outside of time, has triggered the impulse of this introspective introspection by a team of renowned dancers and filmmakers. The physical tension and human flashes of seven bodies crashing into a deliberately chosen enclosed environment, surrounded by the unlit warmth and humidity of the underworld, inhabit and create the poetic mood of the film, echoing Tarkovsky and Beckett.

On the one side Vertigo Bird reveals completely personal attitude of Kovač toward the real ambience of his native town, while on the other the artistic articulations give his attitude broader connotations and develops it into a poetical structure of perception of the real world. Kovač places a group of dancers in this space of man’s activity, whose decline is a historical necessity.

VASHAVA is EN-KNAP film production team's way of saying goodbye to the Slovenian mining town of Trbovlje and, in terms of content, ends a 15-year-long reflection on the industrial era that left its mark on the valley. The international dance company EnKnapGroup enters the mining facilities for the last time before they disappear from the collective consciousness forever.