Yugoslav Cinema Research Articles

Non-Aligned Spies: Secret Agents in the Yugoslav 1960s Cinema

Through an analysis of three films (X-25 javlja/X-25 Reports, František Čáp, 1960; Kota 905/Point 905, Mate Relja, 1960; Abeceda straha/ABC of Fear, Fadil Hadžić, 1961) the article inquires into roles spy movies acquired within the Yugoslav cinema of the 1960s. On the one hand, spy films witness to a process of ‘genre-grafting’ highly symptomatic of the developments in the Yugoslav cinema of the period; on the other hand, however, they also introduce specific problems into this process: with Yugoslavia occupying a nonaligned position in the Cold War context, the metaphor of the ‘Iron Curtain’, largely fuelling the international spy genre of the 1960s, remained inaccessible to Yugoslav spies. Consequently, Yugoslav spy films not only systematically (re)turned to the context of World War II, but also, the ‘enemy within’ became the fundamental neuralgic point of their symbolic strategies. Through the spy’s infiltration, this enemy was then represented in ways which cannot be found in earlier war (partisan) films. The generic structure of the spy film combined with a position of non-alignedness therefore produced specific ideological effects within Yugoslav cinema. Taking film genre theory as its issuing point, this article attempts at offering an insight into this cluster of problems.

More than Comrades: queering Slovenian cinema in Yugoslavia

This article explores the forgotten queer pasts of Eastern European cinema under socialism and highlights the queer cinematic histories of Yugoslavia, specifically its former Republic of Slovenia. Through visual, substantive, and contextual analysis, the article focuses on the selected films with queer undertones made post WWII, arguing that the relationship between queerness and Yugoslav society and cinema was more complex than previously thought. The examples demonstrate that Yugoslav cinema reflected the country’s ambivalent attitudes towards queerness: on the one side, the analysed films featured numerous unhappy queer people and sad endings, on the other, they portrayed images of different non-normative sexualities and gender expressions rebelliously and more openly than is currently acknowledged in queer cinema scholarship.

At the dawn of «the black wave»: the censorship in Yugoslav cinema in the first half of 1960s

At the dawn of «the black wave»: the censorship in Yugoslav cinema in the first half of 1960s

“Das ist Walter”: The Evolving Figure of the Archetypal Hero Embodied by Velimir Bata Živojinović in the Yugoslav War Film

Velimir Bata Živojinović boasts a body of work which traverses 350 motion pictures from Classical Yugoslav Cinema over The New Film to Contemporary Serbian Cinema, historical epic to film noir, family comedy to radical avant-garde. A legendary actor and one of the most significant personalities of Yugoslav cinema, he is best remembered as the archetypal hero of the Partisan film. This research examines the ways in which Živojinović’s popular figure was constructed through the genre of the war film and the brand of Partisan film distinct to Yugoslavia. By situating Živojinović’s star image in the context of his oeuvre, defining Partisan aesthetics and closely analysing three different periods in the actor’s career, with respect to the films which are central in developing his image as the archetypal hero, namely Kozara (Veljko Bulajić 1962), Valter brani Sarajevo/Walter Defends Sarajevo (Hajrudin Krvavac 1972), and Lepa sela lepo gore/Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Srđan Dragojević 1996), I demonstrate how the indestructible partisan figure embodied by Velimir Bata Živojinović was established in on-screen cinematic space, and how this figure continued to develop, transform, and evolve across films, and, finally, through off-screen public space.

When Ships Don’t Come Ashore – a Yugoslav cinema club production’s dissent in-between the personal and the political

As in other Eastern European Countries, film industry and culture were of central interest for the newly established socialist Yugoslav state after the Second World War. Besides the institutionalisation of a professional and profitable film industry, amateur cinema clubs were inaugurated all over the Yugoslav republics for educative purposes in the field of technical culture. Due to a prevailing underestimation of their activities and the specific, relatively liberal Yugoslav socialist path, some of these clubs became hubs of an experimental and critical film scene. This article discusses the film ‘Ships don’t come ashore’ (1955) which Mihovil Pansini – one of the leading figures of Yugoslav experimental film – made in Cinema Club Zagreb in his initial years as a film maker. It is discussed as an early example of a filmic counterpoint to political ideologies and mainstream film themes. A detailed analysis reveals that the dissent of the film, with its story of a person’s impossible escape from an island, comes in three dimensions: the individual stance, the artistic experiment, and the political message.

Crni talas - promena estetičke paradigme i ideološkog (dis)kursa

The paper is dedicated to the new Yugoslav film dubbed the "Black Wave" by the communist authorities in the SFRY, due to its critical relationship established by the directors towards the ideology and dominant system values. The new film trend, taking after the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, introduced a modern aesthetic paradigm to Yugoslav cinema, completely different from the classical, conventional cinematic expression. Black Wave films are known in sociological discourse for their critique of the governing socialist regime, for their subversiveness, polemic and political speech. The paper analyzes representative works that show, on the one hand, the contemporary society and its anomalies, and on the other, a new perspective on the national liberation war and socialist revolution. In both cases, the attributes that are concerned with the individualistic, anti-traditional, modern cinematic form and ideological viewpoints, significantly different from the ones advocated by the authorities, are emphasized. The paper draws particular attention to the humanistic and socio-emancipatory component of the Yugoslav New Wave cinematic works.

Soft Socialism, Hard Realism: Partisan Song, Parody, and Intertextual Listening in Yugoslav Black Wave Film (1968–1972)

AbstractIn this article I examine the use of music in modernist and politically engaged Yugoslav cinema of the 1960s through three groundbreaking black wave films: Želimir Žilnik'sRani radovi(Early Works, 1969), Dušan Makavejev'sWR: Misterije organizma(WR: Mysteries of the Organism, 1971), and Lazar Stojanović’sPlastični isus(Plastic Jesus, 1971). With a specific focus on the use of Partisan songs, I analyse how key political moments are encoded with new levels of meaning in these films, often through parody, irony, and satire. I identify a ‘sonic turn’ within black wave cinema and propose a method of ‘intertextual listening’ to reflect the importance of contextual knowledge in identifying and interpreting the cultural and political baggage trafficked into these movies. I ask how does music shape the discursive strategies and communicative potential of these films, rendering pre-composed music a powerful medium for social and political critique? And in what ways does film music construct the Yugoslav socialist experience more broadly, reflecting how ideals of reform socialism found musical expression in Yugoslavnovi film?

The trouble of gender sin in post-Yugoslav film – in the name of the father

Post-Yugoslav film art is, similarly to Yugoslav cinema, exemplary of masculine cultural domination, approaching socio-national themes in a highly gendered mode and reflecting a return to patriarchy, more brutal than that during the existence of Yugoslavia. A new generation of cinéasts explores, with a backlash mixture of contempt and compassion, the themes of violence, displaying a new assault on female emancipation, which seemed to be in line with the socio-political context of rising nationalist movements that led to the bloody events of the Yugoslav war in 1991. The female character is re-located to a place traditionally assigned to women not as the subject of narrative or discourse, but as the object of love and/or hatred by a masculine subject. The films chosen to be analysed here are full-length auteur feature films – Virgina, Grbavica, Djeca, Bure baruta, with a specific focus on the work by Danis Tanović – are not representative of post-Yugoslav cinema, but as rare exceptions demonstrate that, contrary to the dominant post-Yugoslav public opinion, both the Yugoslav wars and post-war traumatic realities remain cinematically unexplored.

Citizen Ivanov Versus Comrade Tito: Partisans in Soviet and Yugoslav Cinema of the Second Word War (1960–1985)

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. …The only writer of history with the gift of se...

Yugoslav Black Wave and Critical Discourse: The Review of the Past, Criticism of Today and The Anticipation of Crisis

Considering the so-called black wave as a group of original achievements of the Yugoslav cinema, I set aside its dominant themes. As most important I have marked: 1. The post-war chaos and the inversion of values; 2. The forms of alienation In socialist society; 3. The sexual revolution; 4. Assumptions about the possibility of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; 5. The representations of marginalized groups. These topics are mentioned as forms of critique of real socialism at the time that reveals dissatisfaction with inconsistent application of Marxist thought in social practice. Today, when one can notice exoticism of the past and as its consequence the so called yugonostalgia the post-Yugoslav societies, these films can serve as a basis for questioning the value system of the Yugoslav socialist society to reveal the cracks in its idealized picture. Although the film, as a cultural product remains on the border between fantasy and the document, it reflects social relations. Like other forms of art film can be read like a text, and its semantics reveal consistency of defects, latent and manifest social criticism.

How the love was tempered: labour, romance and gender asymmetry in the classical Yugoslav film

This article tackles the relationship between gender and work as screened by classical Yugoslav cinema. It focuses on a string of films produced from 1948 to 1958, set in the context of the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country and socialist society. Relying on the thesis concerning the dwindling of revolutionary morale in the 1950s, the analysis explores the ways in which the devaluation of work in the name of consumption, and the re-domestification and objectification of women correlated with a telling divide between the male and female protagonists in the ‘construction cycle’. While the films privileged the man as a natural born worker, they designated the woman first and foremost in terms of her love for the man. In this respect, the gender politics of the classical Yugoslav cinema were more indebted to Hollywood melodramas than to the socialist-realist celebration of gender equality, as manifested in Eastern European cinemas.

A portrait of the artist as a political dissident: the life and work of Aleksandar Petrovic

In the liberal West as in socialist Yugoslavia, the films of Aleksandar Petrovic dramatize how enforced dogmatism can corrode any political system. A case study of the oft-overlooked Yugoslav director’s colorful and eventful career, A Portrait of the Artist as a Political Dissident explores how Petrovic developed specific political and social themes in his films. A response to the political vagaries of his time, these anti-dogmatic views were later to become a trademark of his work. Although interest in socialist Yugoslavia and its legacy has risen steadily since the 1990s, the history of Yugoslav cinema has been scarcely covered, and this book marks a fresh contribution to a burgeoning area of interest.

Zmierzch bogów w Dubrowniku

The Croatian film Occupation in 26 pictures (1978), directed by Lordan Zafranović is considered as one of the most controversial vision of the Second World War in Yugoslav cinema. The director uses the ornamental style, modeled on Italian cinema, to portray the change of power in Dubrovnik in 1941 – at the beginning of the fascist occupation of the city. He juxtaposes the licentiousness of Italian, German and Croatian fascists and the fall of the Dubrovnik aristocracy and the rebellion of communists. The political changes in the city are presented against the background of its rich cultural tradition. Zafranović highlights the beauty of Dubrovnik’s architectural and natural landscape that fascists desecrate. Decadent poetics with its aesthetic excess allows him to refresh and deepen the communist interpretation of the fascist occupation.

My own private Yugoslavia: František Čap and the socialist celluloid closet

ABSTRACTJust as the queering of the western cinemas helped us to discern the complexities lurking under the ‘hetero vs. homo’ dichotomy in the western socio-political milieux, similar enquiry into the Eastern European cinemas during socialism can help us to more fully explore the history of the ‘socialist closet’ in different Eastern European countries and societies. Problematizing the chronic non-existence of representations of queers in Eastern European cinemas during socialism, this article tackles the issue in the context of Yugoslav cinema. Enquiry into the relation between Yugoslav cinema and queer sexuality so far has been mainly conducted as an exercise in homo-spotting: the authors would more or less catalogue gay and lesbian characters sporadically appearing on-screen. Important and necessary as it is, this approach should be supplanted by the analyses that go beyond the pinning down of overt homosexual identities, and explore their very stability. Arguing for employment and testing of queer theory with regard to the history of Yugoslav cinema, this article looks at Vrata ostaju otvorena/The Doors Remain Open, a 1959 film by Czech émigré director František Čap, and treats it as a showcase of the ‘socialist celluloid closet’ that encompasses several strategies of both displaying queer desire, and avoiding the standard happy ending based on the formation of heterosexual couple.

Yugoslav Propaganda Film: Early Works (1945–52)

THE BIRTH OFTHE NEW YUGOSLAV COMMUNIST state from the ashes of World War Il announced a new era of the Yugoslav film, its life starting from the whirlpool of the revolution. The devastated country lived to see liberation from the German occupation, but with an almost completely destroyed infrastructure, demolished cinema facilities, and a lack of qualified professionals. Immediately after the end of combat activities, the new communist regime decided to tackle the film issue seriously, having in mind prewar and war experiences and especially the experiences and legacy of its grand mentor, the Soviet Union. Organization of the national cinematography commenced slightly before the end of the war on July 16, 1944, when the film section within the Propaganda Division of the Serbian National Liberation Army general staff was established. The primary objective of this section was rehabilitating the remaining cinemas, organizing film projections, and reviewing and censoring existing films. After the liberation of Belgrade, in December 1944, the film section was established within the Propaganda Division of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Units of Yugoslavia, with the purpose of organizing the procurement and projection of films in addition to their production, sale, and distribution in the liberated territory. At the same time, in November 1944, the State Film Company of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY) was established; its mission was to work on cultivating cinematography in the country, to monitorthe importingand distribution of films, and to supervise operation of cinemas. In the course of the following year, in November 1945, the Film Company of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was established, whereas the film sections within Supreme Headquarters and the general staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Units of Yugoslavia and Serbia were terminated. In parallel, the new personnel structure of professionals to be involved in designing the national film in this initial period was being established. The enthusiasm of many prewar film and literary authors, painters, and other artists (AleksandarVucho, Radosh Novakovich, Branko Belan, Franc Kosmach, Nikola Popovich, and others), many of whom were active participants in the People's Liberation War, was employed in the manner of outstanding workmanship for rehabilitation of the national cinematography. In the early period of Yugoslav film, propaganda was a high-ranking institution, taking into account a need for mobilization of the masses for the purpose of rehabilitation and reinforcing the newly established revolutionary regime. In accordance with the proclaimed objectives of the Communist Party, the propaganda was related to many segments of social activities, media, and communication, including film. With respect to the fact that the regime was well-versed in the Soviet propaganda model, in this early period of Yugoslav cinematography, immediate steps were taken to utilize film for propaganda purposes. The administrative period in managing the national cinematography commenced with the establishment of the new Film Company at the federal level. This company had the same responsibilities as the previous one- that is, the exclusive right to import and distribute films, organize mobile cinemas, and produce national films. The administrative period of Yugoslav cinematography, according to Petar Volk, was the most interesting phase from the propaganda point of view, considering that the foundation for development and implementation of the propaganda film was set during this period; Yugoslav cinema would record dynamic growth in the years to follow, until the breakup of Yugoslavia (10-34). The major role in this state-owned film enterprise was reserved for Agitprop of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party (i.e., its department of culture), in trying to establish- following the Soviet propaganda model- absolute control in the fields of culture and film. …

Spaces of ideology in South Slavic films

ABSTRACTThe article opens with a brief overview of the political circumstances that helped or hindered the development of the film industry in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states, in particular Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Several critical points in Yugoslav cinema in the pre-1991 period are outlined, underscoring a bifurcation of official and subversive films. A similar tendency is then observed in the post-1991 period, when nationalistic policies in the new states resulted in government-sponsored films and ‘irreverent’ films that undermined official discourse. This backdrop serves for further investigation into the ways in which external political factors affected the narrative morphology of regional films in the socialist and post-socialist periods. It is shown that the notion of movement-through-space is frequently exploited as a cohesive element on the narrative level, only to yield opposite ideological constructs: the narratives of Partisan films tend to be structured around the concept of appropriation of space as an ultimate metaphor for overcoming obstacles on the road to communism, while ‘travelling and not arriving’ appears as a recurring motif in war films from the post-1990 period. In discussing ten recent films, I show how spatial entropy conveys a sense of political deadlock and collapse of space not only as a real category but as a memory of a country that no longer exists.

Breaking the wave: A commentary on ‘Black Wave polemics: Rhetoric as aesthetic’ by Greg DeCuir, Jr

ABSTRACTThis commentary critically engages with a description of the Yugoslav ‘Black Wave’ elaborated by Greg DeCuir, Jr. In contrast to DeCuir, the author argues that the group of film-makers usually labelled as the ‘Black Wave’ are by no means a movement with a single ideological outlook, let alone with the one that DeCuir brands and defines as Methodical Marxist. The author draws on writings and interviews by the film-makers and the Yugoslav cinema scholars who are symptomatically absent from DeCuir's article. Although criticizing it for recycling the ‘Artist versus Regime’ dichotomy, the author nevertheless maintains that DeCuir's article is at odds with the totalitarian paradigm that dominates post-Yugoslav film criticism and historiography on Yugoslav cinema.

‘Cinema of normalization’: changes of stylistic model in post-Yugoslav cinema after the 1990s

ABSTRACTThe topic of this article is the change of stylistic dominant in the national cinemas of post-Yugoslav countries after the year 2000 and the huge political changes in Croatia and Serbia. In all post-Yugoslav states this was a period of political, social and economic changes, which is usually named by a common denominator: ‘normalization’. The objects of my analysis are three films coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. All these films: Grbavica/Esma's Secret (Jasmila Žbanić), Apsolutnih 100/Absolute 100 (Srdan Golubović) and Armin (Ognjen Sviličić) share many stylistic and thematic similarities. All three films break, implicitly or explicitly, with the tradition of Yugoslav cinema of the 1990s and the notion of ‘Balkan cinema’, inherited by auteurs like Kusturica or Dragojević. Some of them even include a metafilmic critique of that model. These three films are examples of the broader stylistic shift, which is connected with political and social changes. Therefore, the new stylistic dominant could be named as ‘cinema of normalization’.

‘Lemons in Siberia’: a new approach to the study of the Yugoslav cinema of the 1950s

Studies in Croatian and Yugoslav cinema (and Eastern European cinema in general) traditionally organize the subject according to a great master narrative. That narrative explains the history of Croatian/Yugoslav/Eastern European cinema as a long and liberating voyage from Soviet‐style dogmatism of the post‐war era up to a complete emancipation in the heroic era of the 1960s modernism. Most of the scholars who studied the history of Yugoslav cinema (Škrabalo, Volk, Goulding, etc.) narrate film history according to this narrative. The intention of this text is to question that narrative, and offer a possible alternative methodological approach. Our starting point is Croatian cinema, in which the late 1950s and early 1960s were not just a transition period toward the full liberation of the modernist movement. On the contrary, for Croatian cinema that period was almost a ‘golden era’ in which Croatian cinema produced most of its masterpieces, including four to five evergreen classics, two Academy Award nominees, and a certain number of mature and challenging genre works. All of these films perfectly fit into a stylistic and ideological model of ‘classic narrative style’. This paper revisits some of these films (Branko Bauer's Don't Turn Around, Son (1956) and Three Annas (1959), Branko Belan's Concert (1954), Nikola Tanhofer's H‐8 (1958), Franci Stiglic's Ninth Circle (1960), Fadil Hadzic's Alphabet of Fear (1961)). By examining these Croatian films (and some other films from the Yugoslav 1950s, including Zika Mitrovic's Captain Leshi (1960)), this paper offers an alternative approach for understanding pre‐modernist Yugoslav cinema. The paper argues that the master narrative which explains the Yugoslav 1950s in general is a story of a gradual achieving of the (mainly Western) technologies and know‐how within the political framework of communist society. It demonstrates how this process worked in the field of industry, media, everyday life and the entertainment industry. It further examines the Yugoslav film industry of the 1950s as part of that process. For the Yugoslav cinema of the 1950s, the technological model which had to be domesticated was a model of American and Western European classic narrative style. Most of the films that we discuss in the paper consciously use Western cinema classic as a model. By using motives, dramaturgy and type of characters of American/Western European cinema in their classic works, Yugoslav directors had to deal with the implicit ideological content of the Western classic narrative style cinema. Within the new frame of the communist society, that ideological content mutates in an often unexpected way.

Disintegration in frames: aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cinema

Disintegration in frames: aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cinema