In Slovenia, a 'cinema system' that was co-financed by the state arose only after the Second World War. It is probably no coincidence that the creation of a state cinema coincided with the appropriation of amateur means of non-official expression. In 1947, when the first Slovene sound feature, France Štiglic’s Na svoji zemlji ('On Our Own Land'), was produced, Boštjan Hladnik began his amateur/alternative film production with the remarkable Deklica v gorah ('A Girl in the Mountains'), an 8mm black-and-white film made without state subsidy and created outside of official circles of film production.

From the 1950s to the 1970s there was a relatively active culture of alternative film production. Some of the first important experiments in Slovenia came in the 1950s (Hladnik), followed in the 1960s by individuals (Rozman, Godina, Pregelj) and also some collectives (the group OHO). Some of this work arose as a kind of parallel to the state film production monopolies such as Triglav Film and Viba Film Studio, but as a rule these films were the products of strictly amateur production techniques, generally employing 8mm, S8mm or 16mm film (and giving way completely in the 1980s to video production). The 'amateur/alternative' film movement of the 1970s and 1980s represents an important era of the region’s visual culture. Slovene amateur/alternative film has a closer relation to the lumiere form of visual inquiry, a documentary approach to visual experiment that has less to do with the more theoretically-driven avant gardes of Western Europe or the Soviet Union.

One important part of this history was that of the ŠKUC/Studenski Kulturni Centre, which was known in its various phases under the names Centre for Student Amateur Film, Centre for Student Film, Film Redaction and then E-motion Film/Vertigo. For more than 20 years this organisation was active in exhibition as well as production, and the contribution of this entity to educational and critical film culture in Slovenia in the 1970s was very important, especially in student and amateur film making. The legendary film presentations that took place in the discotheque in Block IV of the students’ hostel included film experiments by Franci Slak, Matjaž Žbontar and other members of the student film group, as well as work by the professional film maker Filip Robar whose unconventional, individualistic film experiments, produced under the name of his company Filmske Alternative, became virtually synonymous with the term alternative film at the end of the 1970s.

The 1980s saw the position of Film Redaction strengthened, and the alternative movement beginning to play a more significant role in Slovenia's cultural life. Numerous screenings of experimental films, art cinema and other kinds of non-official work provided an important option for audiences and proved the viability of amateur/alternative film as an option for Slovene film makers. There were presentations of several cycles of New German cinema, as well as retrospectives of Fassbinder, Herzog, Pasolini, Duras, Rivette, Schmid, McLaren, Jost, Lambert, Warhol and Zilnik. There were shows from the Bela Balazs Studio (Budapest), the Millennium Film Centre (New York), films from the Third Reich, Chinese films, films by independents (Horn, Rose, Petit, Beiserdorf, Greenaway, LeGrice, Fleischer) and the first organised video projections (Nuša and Srečo Dragan, selected American and French video art). Among the productions originating in the ŠKUC circle screened during this time, the most significant were Kras 88 (a group project), Aura and Aurovision, Slobodan Valentinčič’s 805 Hommage, Ej Klanje and La popolazine, Ona ni ranjena ('She is not Hurt') by Davorin Marc, and Daily News, Zemlja Mesec ('The Earth and the Moon') and Vaje za kamero ('Rehearsals for the Camera') by Franci Slak. The first permanent art cinema in Ljubljana, the Križanke Cinema, was the result of a 1988 initiative of ŠKUC. Film Redaction changed its name to E-motion Film/Vertigo and during this period succeeded in stimulating a great deal of amateur/alternative production, such as Damjan Kozole’s first feature, a 'film about film', The Fatal Telephone (16/35mm, b/w, 70 min) and the 1982 film by Zvonko Čoh and Milan Erič, Poskušaj migati dvakrat ('Try Moving Twice', S8mm, b/w, 45m; second version, 1986, 16mm b/w, 28 m), which explored pictorial dimensions of 'omnipotent' animation.