Film career Urc began his professional career as a director and head dramaturg at the Newsreel Film Unit and the Short Film Studio in Bratislava. During the 1960s, Urc was a key figure in the "thaw" of Slovak documentary filmmaking. He collaborated frequently with Ján Sýkora, notably on the film
Hlási sa Slobodný slovenský vysielač (The Free Slovak Broadcaster Calls, 1964), which challenged official historical narratives of the
Slovak National Uprising. During the period of
political normalization following the 1968
Warsaw Pact invasion, Urc was barred from documentary filmmaking. He subsequently moved into the field of animation, which became the focus of his later career. As the head dramaturg of the Studio of Animated Film at
Koliba, Urc mentored a generation of animators. He was instrumental in the development of the
Večerníček (bedtime story) format for television, directing and overseeing series that became staples of Slovak broadcasting. In 1985, he co-founded the Biennial of Animation Bratislava (BAB).
Academic and scholarly work Following the
Velvet Revolution in 1989, Urc was instrumental in establishing the Department of Animation at the
Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). Urc's founding of the Department of Animation at VŠMU represented a "rescue mission" for the medium following the collapse of the state-run Koliba film studios. In his later years, he became a prominent advocate for
oral history in film studies, working to record the testimonies of filmmakers from the communist era to ensure a complete historical record. As a film scholar, he published several foundational texts on Slovak cinema, including
Slovenský animovaný film (Slovak Animated Film) and various historical monographs on documentary filmmaking. == Death ==