Anthology Film Archives

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THE POWER OF THREE: THE TRIPTYCH IN YUGOSLAV CINEMA

September 18 – September 29

September 18-29, 2024

Three stories, three directors, three perspectives on the world. The cinematic triptych is a form that has recurred throughout the history of film. The heyday of the triptych (or omnibus film) occurred in Europe during the 1960s, as directors such as De Sica, Fellini, Godard, Pasolini, and Visconti took turns creating short “films within a film” that were interwoven thematically or visually with works by other directors to form feature-length anthologies. This tradition later migrated to the U.S., where triptychs proliferated anew in the late 1980s, in projects such as Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese’s NEW YORK STORIES (1989). However, nowhere did the triptych receive such a vital and lasting treatment as in Yugoslav cinema, where it took on a life of its own.

Yugoslav triptychs diversified the possibilities of episodic narration, articulated radical socio-political critiques, and burst into free-form poems, sometimes all within one film. They experimented with the power of three and brought out its full aesthetic potential in character studies and omnibus films, existential dramas and rock ‘n’ roll pictures.

Encompassing a selection of Yugoslav film triptychs from different eras – from the classical period to the 1960s Black Wave and on to the Prague School that emerged in the 1970s – this series invites the rediscovery of a range of master directors including Branko Bauer, Aleksandar Petrović, Živojin Pavlović, Hajrudin Krvavac, Lordan Zafranović, and Srđan Karanović.

The program opens with Bauer’s enigmatic THREE GIRLS NAMED ANNA, which is both an homage to neorealism and a work that anticipates the modernist treatments of human conscience in the 1960s. THE CITY – directed by Marko Babac, Živojin Pavlović, and Vojislav ‘Kokan’ Rakonjac – was the only film officially banned by the courts in Yugoslavia and is a stellar work that takes us on a Dostoevskian trip into the underground. VORTEX, an early experimental work by the canonical director of partisan films, Hajrudin Krvavac, focuses on three characters who are engaged in missions to save someone they love. THREE by Aleksandar Petrović is a landmark of the Yugoslav Black Wave with stories set before, during, and after WWII, all of which are connected by the theme of human agency in the face of death and by the performances of screen legend Velimir Bata Živojinović.

A new generation arrives through the work of Yugoslav filmmakers who graduated from the film school FAMU in the Czech Republic, and became known as the Prague School. DALMATIAN CHRONICLE is an exploration of crime and the twists in the human psyche by Lordan Zafranović, while Srđan Karanović’s PETRIA’S WREATH tells the story of a peasant woman who bears all the tribulations of her country and the historical upheavals of the 20th century, and stands out as one of cinema’s crowning achievements. The program concludes with the Belgrade music scene through the cult classic, THE FALL OF ROCK & ROLL.

Guest-programmed by Mina Radović, who will be here in person to introduce selected screenings.

The series is presented with generous support from The Njegoš Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture and the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.

Special thanks to Vladimir Angelov, Damjana Ivanovska, and Aleksandar Trajkovski (Cinematheque of North Macedonia); Aleksandar Erdeljanović (Archive of Jugoslovenska Kinoteka); Slavoljub Gnjatovic (Delta Video); Ines Tanović (Film Center Sarajevo); and Dinko Majcen, Vjeran Pavlinić, and Lucija Zore (Croatian State Archives – Croatian Cinematheque).

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