For the film Kresnik: The Lore of Fire, directed by David Sipoš, we conceived an interdisciplinary event in collaboration with the Akademski pevski zbor Tone Tomšič. The conceptual framework was grounded in sensory anthropology and the ethnology of the midsummer fire ritual. The event was designed as a synaesthetic prelude to the cinematic experience, in which scent functioned not merely as an accompanying element, but as the primary medium of entry into the symbolic and collective imaginary of the Kresnik festival.
Within the darkened auditorium, we reconstructed an olfactory landscape characteristic of the summer solstice in Slovenia. Kresovanje, associated with the Feast of St John the Baptist (24 June) and with the pre-Christian mythological strata of the figure of Kresnik, represents in ethnological terms a transitional ritual situated within the liminal time of the longest day of the year. Its symbolism is closely intertwined with fire as a purifying and protective force, with vegetal magic (for example, the gathering of midsummer herbs such as St John’s wort, wormwood and fern), and with ritual practices including the leaping over bonfires, the singing of midsummer songs, and communal village gatherings.
The scents introduced into the space were carefully selected on the basis of ethnographic sources and field records of midsummer practices: the smoke of beech wood and spruce resin evoking village bonfires; the fragrance of freshly cut grass and hay signifying the agrarian summer landscape; and the aromatic accents of midsummer herbs, which in folk tradition carried apotropaic and healing functions. These olfactory elements were anthropologically situated as carriers of collective memory and intergenerational transmission.
Visitors thus entered the visual world of kresovanje first through scent – through that dimension of perception most closely linked, both neurobiologically and culturally, with memory and affect. Smell acted as a catalyst for reminiscence, a bridge to childhood experiences of bonfires, communal singing, and the nocturnal glow of firelight. The olfactory layer was interwoven with a sonic landscape: the polyphonic singing of the choir, melodies rooted in midsummer song traditions, and the subtle acoustic textures of fire and night-time nature. In this way, a multisensory matrix was created in which sight, sound, scent and embodied presence converged.
The immersive experience functioned as a ritual threshold – a contemporary recontextualisation of an initiatory moment that prepared the audience to enter the cinematic narrative. The film did not begin merely as a projection of images, but as a continuation of an already established sensory and symbolic field. Viewers entered the visual dimension of the film with activated layers of memory and with their senses fully attuned, enabling a deeper reception of the mythic, ethnological and collective-identity dimensions of the midsummer rite.
