Between the Center and the Margin.

The article concentrates on some disctinctive modes of negotiation of Slovak identity within (and via) Slovak cinema of the past quarter of the century. Inspired by texts of A. Kiossev, H. K. Bhabha and M. Augé, it proposes a story of contemporary Slovak cinema as the cinema of the lack (of national identity). This lack is both metaphorically masked and metonymically recalled by various treatments of communal memory, and by various references to geopolitical location of the country, while national identity appears as lost between notions of the center and the margin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]