Film Screenings / Programs / Series
AVANT-GARDE CINEMA FROM EX-YUGOSLAVIA, 1950s-80s
March 6 – March 8
March 6-8, 2015
Despite Anthology’s roots in the international underground/avant-garde film movements of the 1950s-60s – and our ongoing institutional commitment to preserving, screening, and promoting the experimental films of that period and beyond – a critically important realm of avant-garde cinema has been largely neglected in the U.S. over the years, even within our halls: the wave of films that emerged in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia. While a handful of filmmakers have penetrated the consciousness of American scholars and cineastes – Dušan Makavejev above all, though Karpo Godina and Želimir Žilnik have begun to make ripples as well – these artists are merely the tip of the iceberg, representing an experimental film movement of extraordinary richness, inventiveness, and uncompromising political engagement.
To begin to redress the invisibility of these films here in the U.S., as well as to call attention to some of the important institutions and organizations that are heroically working (in the face of daunting obstacles) to preserve the avant-garde cinema of ex-Yugoslavia, we’ve invited the Slovenian Cinematheque, the Croatian Film Association, and the Academic Film Center, Belgrade, to curate programs showcasing films from their collections. The resulting series expands upon a groundbreaking program curated for Anthology in 2012 by scholar and writer Pavle Levi, and hopefully itself represents a preview of things to come. Though even these four programs represent only the most selective of surveys of the Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian avant-garde movements, the films included here are guaranteed to transform your conception of 20th-century experimental cinema.
Very special thanks to Jurij Meden (Slovenian Cinematheque & George Eastman House), Diana Nenadić (Croatian Film Association), and Miodrag Miša Milošević (Academic Film Center, Student City Cultural Center, Belgrade).
Jurij Meden, the curator of Program 1, will be here in person to present the screening of Slovenian work on Fri, Mar 6!
SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA PRESENTS:
8MM EXPERIMENTS BY KARPO GODINA AND DAVORIN MARC
All films preserved/restored by the Slovenian Cinematheque, Ljubljana, and selected by Jurij Meden.
Karpo Godina, arguably the most internationally acclaimed Slovenian filmmaker and cinematographer, launched his career in the mid-sixties with a quick succession of independently produced 8mm experimental shorts, predominantly designed to question everything he was being taught at the state film academy. DIVJAD, PES and ANNO PASSATO, which comprise only a small part of this succession, are primarily exercises in motion: constant motion of the gaze, constant motion in front of the gaze, motion in all known and unknown directions, all linked together through seemingly random editing and mere hints of lustful stories. In retrospect it seems as if Godina had to go through this somewhat naive, romantic, frantic phase in order to quickly arrive at what he became famous for: extracting as much (political) action and dynamics as possible from meticulously framed, perfectly still images (see GRATINIRANI MOZAK PUPILIJE FERKEVERK). Emerging a decade after the hairy hippie Godina, the post-punk Davorin Marc remains very much a subject for further research. Notoriously reclusive and with over 150 Super-8mm and 16mm films under his belt, he modestly describes his work as “small films,” period, pushing the notion of understatement to a radical, bleeding new extreme.
SLOVENIAN CINEMATHEQUE
Slovenian Cinematheque (SC) started its work in 1994, was officially recognized by the Slovenian government in 1996 and became a full member of the International Federation of Film Archives in 2012. SC is primarily a film museum, dedicated to thinking about cinema in all possible ways and shapes beyond commercial imperatives. SC treats cinema as a medium, a (historical) record, an art, a (not necessarily popular) culture, a tool of expression. SC is involved in film programming, preservation, publishing, research, and education. In 2009 SC started its very own special film collection, focused on the previously almost completely neglected avant-garde cinema from the region.
Karpo Godina & Jure Pervanje GAME / DIVJAD 1965, 6 min, 8mm-to-35mm, b&w
Karpo Godina & Mario Uršić DOG / PES 1965, 8 min, 8mm-to-35mm, b&w
Karpo Godina A.P. (ANNO PASSATO) 1966, 5 min, 8mm-to-35mm, b&w
Karpo Godina THE GRATINATED BRAINS OF PUPILIJA FERKEVERK / GRATINIRANI MOZAK PUPILIJE FERKEVERK 1970, 15 min, 35mm
Davorin Marc BITE ME. ONCE ALREADY. / UGRIZNI ME. ŽE ENKRAT. 1978/80, 1.5 min, Super 8mm, silent
Davorin Marc SLAUGHTER AHOY / EJ KLANJE 1981, 16 min, Super 8mm
Davorin Marc FEAR IN THE CITY (1181 DAYS LATER OR SMELL OF RATS) / PAURA IN CITTA (1181 DNI POZNEJE ALI VONJ PO PODGANAH) 1984, 21 min, Super 8mm-to-35mm
Plus:
Davorin Marc PIKNIK (25 SECONDS PER FRAME) 2013/14, 11 min, Super 8mm-to-digital, silent
Total running time: ca. 80 min.
Fri, Mar 6 at 8:00.
SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF CROATIA PRESENTS:
CROATIAN AVANT-GARDE FILMMAKERS OF THE 1960s
All films preserved/restored by the Croatian Film Association and Croatian Film Archives (Croatian State Archives), and selected by Diana Nenadić (Croatian Film Association).
Along with Mihovil Pansini, Ante Verzotti, and a few others, the filmmakers represented in this program are the most prominent members of the enormously vibrant Croatian experimental scene of the 1960s. All of them were members of the amateur cine-clubs that formed in all the major cities of Yugoslavia at the time, as well as prominent participants of the unique festival of experimental film – the Genre Film Festival (GEFF, 1963-70), based in Zagreb – which was the most important gathering point for ‘film researchers’ and other independent filmmakers from Yugoslavia. Sometimes they collaborated (Petek and Gotovac co-directed some of their early works, Gotovac starred in Martinac’s and Zafranović’s works, and Zafranović was Martinac’s favorite actor), but despite these links their approach to cinematic experiments differed greatly. Thus, Petek’s early work represents a prototype of the so-called anti-film, a very influential concept launched by Zagreb experimentalists in the early 1960s, which was both the key driving force and thematic focus of the first GEFF. Gotovac’s films anticipated the structural film movement, while Martinac embodied a poetic-meditative orientation that has been the hallmark of the so-called Split Film Circle, which also includes Zafranović, a filmmaker more inclined to fiction and proto-narrative forms. Both the amateur and the professional stages of their work were related in various ways to the Croatian Film Association, whose Archives, founded in 1974, preserve their amateur shorts and distribute professional ones produced by Filmski autorski studio.
Vladimir Petek ENCOUNTER / SRETANJE 1963, 5 min, 35mm, b&w
Tomislav Gotovac THE FORENOON OF A FAUN / PRIJE PODNE JEDNOG FAUNA 1963, 8 min, 16mm, b&w
Tomislav Gotovac STRAIGHT LINE (STEVENS-DUKE) / PRAVAC (STEVENS-DUKE) 1964, 10 min, 16mm, b&w
Tomislav Gotovac CIRCLE (JUTKEVICH-COUNT) / KRUŽNICA (JUTKEVIČ-COUNT) 1964, 12 min, 16mm, b&w
Ivan Martinac I’M MAD 1967, 5 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm
Ivan Martinac FOCUS 1967, 7 min, 35mm, b&w
Lordan Zafranović PEOPLE (IN PASSING) II / LJUDI (U PROLAZU) II 1967, 11 min, 35mm, b&w
Lordan Zafranović AFTERNOON (THE GUN) / POSLIJE PODNE (PUŠKA) 1968, 15 min, 35mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 80 min.
Sat, Mar 7 at 7:30.
THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM MOVEMENT IN SERBIA
All films preserved/restored by the Academic Film Center, Student City Cultural Center, Belgrade, and selected by Miodrag Miša Milošević.
With the establishment of Cine Clubs in Yugoslavia after WWII, the filmmakers at the front ranks of experimental (and later on professional) cinema in Serbia in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s – including Dušan Makavejev, Živojin Pavlović, Vojislav Kokan Rakonjac, and Želimir Žilnik – created a number of films which used narrative experimentation to pose questions related to the essence of the socialist social system. Their professional films, made during the 1960s, displayed a deep social and political engagement that strongly shook the existing socialist society, and won the movement the name “Black Wave” (Cinema Noir) in Yugoslavia.
His meeting with Petar Arandjelović on the GEFF Festival led Tomislav Gotovac to Belgrade, where in 1964 the two of them created the famous structural film trilogy – STRAIGHT LINE (STEVENS-DUKE), BLUE RIDER (GODARD-ART), and CIRCLE (JUTKEVIČ-COUNT) – which would completely transform the previously held understanding of experimental film. Film as a medium of expression and film in which the structure plays the dominant role were the most widespread in the 1960s and 70s in Belgrade. Authors like Zoran Popović, Slobodan Šijan, and Ljubomir Šimunić originated from artistic circles and began to organize private screenings in their own homes of their films, which explored diverse visual structures. Vjekoslav Nakić, Nikola Djurić, and Radoslav Vladić created films with pure structures and atmospheres, which for a certain period of time proliferated at the festivals of experimental film in Yugoslavia. Ivan Obrenov and Bojan Jovanović, through the predominant post-modernist style of their works, again (in the spirit of the “Black Wave”) began to pose questions related to the topics of unfinished revolutions and neo-colonialism. And at the beginning of the 1980s, Miroslav Bata Petrović, with his PURE FILM, MEMENTO OF GEFF, would deal with the results of the materialist approach to film.
ACADEMIC FILM CENTER, STUDENT CITY CULTURAL CENTER, BELGRADE
The Academic Cine Club was founded in 1958, and since 1976 it has been in operation as The Academic Film Center in the Student City Cultural Center in Belgrade. In its Alternative Film Archives, it keeps and distributes films that are of significance to the history of experimental cinema in Serbia.
For the two Serbian programs, all the films will be shown digitally, due to the fragility and uniqueness of the prints; original formats are listed below.
FORMATIVE YEARS (1950s-60s)
Dušan Makavejev ANTONIO’S BROKEN MIRROR / ANTONIJEVO RAZBIJENO OGLEDALO 1957, 11 min, 16mm, b&w
Živojin Pavlović TRYPTICH ON MATTER AND DEATH / TRIPTIH O MATERIJI I SMRTI 1960, 9 min, 16mm, b&w
Vojislav Kokan Rakonjac THE WALL / ZID 1960, 8 min, 16mm, b&w
Dragoslav Lazić SMOKE AND WATER / DIM I VODA 1962, 12 min, 16mm, b&w
Sava Trifković ARMS IN THE PURPLE DISTANCE / RUKE LJUBIČASTIH DALJINA 1962, 11 min, 16mm, b&w
Petar Arandjelović ECSTASY / EKSTAZA 1963, 5.5 min, 16mm, b&w
Tomislav Gotovac BLUE RIDER (GODARD-ART) / PLAVI JAHAČ (GODARD-ART) 1964, 14 min, 16mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 75 min.
Sun, Mar 8 at 6:00.
YEARS OF STRUCTURE (1960s-80s)
Zoran Popović HEAD – CIRCLE / GLAVA – KRUG 1968-69, 5 min, 8mm, b&w
Vjekoslav Nakić COMPOSITION / KOMPOZICIJA 1970, 6 min, 16mm, b&w
Slobodan Šijan THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS / VRT SA STAZAMA ŠTO SE RAČVAJU 1971, 4 min, 8mm
Bojana Vujanović JOURNEY / PUTOVANJE 1972, 2 min, 16mm, b&w/color
Mirko Avramović & Miodrag Tarana FROM ME TO YOU / OD MENE DO TEBE 1972, 4 min, 8mm, b&w
Nikola Đurić VOWELS / SAMOGLASNICI 1973, 8 min, 16mm, b&w
Ljubomir Šimunić GERDY, THE WICKED WITCH / GERDY, ZLOČESTA VJEŠTICA 1973-76, 9.5 min, 8mm
Ivan Obrenov EXPIRATION / IZDAH 1976, 12 min, 16mm
Radoslav Vladić HOUSE / KUĆA 1977, 8 min, 16mm
Bojan Jovanović HOLIDAY / PRAZNIK 1983, 11 min, 16mm
Miroslav Bata Petrović PURE FILM: MEMENTO OF GEFF / ČISTI FILM: SEĆANJE NA GEFF 1984, 5 min, 16mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 80 min.
Sun, Mar 8 at 8:00.
